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NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Nature  and 

Nature 


OC:T  2^.  1934 


Essays  Metaphysical  and  Historical 


By 

HARTLEY  BURR  'ALEXANDER 


TO  yap  cpyov  reXog,  y  8*  evepyeia  to  epyov 


CHICAGO  LONDON 

THE  OPEN  COURT  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

1923 


Copyright  by 


Thb  Open  ^ourt  Publishing  Company 
Chicago 

1923 


Printed  in  the  United  States  oj  America 


To 

WILLIAM  ROMAINE  NEWBOLD 


With  Admiration  and 
Affection 


PREFACE 


The  essays  which  form  this  volume  follow  the 
reflections  of  some  fifteen  years,  during  which 
their  author’s  chief  pursuit  has  been  philosophy,  as 
recorded  in  letters.  To  him  philosophy  seems  to 
be,  in  the  nature  of  things,  necessarily  more  or  less 
autobiographical :  the  reflective  refinement  out  of 
the  dross  of  a  man’s  diurnal  experience, — be  it  of 
nature,  be  it  of  men,  be  it  of  men’s  souls  as  por¬ 
trayed  in  books, — of  some  form-giving  character 
which  is  his  essential  confession.  The  systemic 
treatise,  to  such  a  point  of  regard,  appears  curiously 
vain:  or  at  least  vain  if  conceived  to  be  more  than 
a  high  effort  at  self-consistency.  Perhaps  elaborated 
system  does  indeed  show  a  finer  conscientiousness 
than  governs  a  less  directed  activity  of  the  mind, 
and  is  hence  justified  for  its  author’s  soul’s  sake; 
but  in  any  case  the  man  is  behind  the  book;  and 
however  highly  a  priori,  however  aridly  impersonal 
in  form,  your  book  of  metaphysics  in  the  end  comes 
down  to  the  plane  of  all  literature:  a  public  con- 
fiteor. 

Essays  produced  as  were  these  perforce  follow 
the  currents  of  contingent  interests, — the  dual  con¬ 
tingencies  of  the  author’s  willfulness  and  of  the 
changing  colors  of  his  time.  Some  are  inspired  by 
books  of  the  hour;  some  by  ancient  books;  some 
by  no  book,  but  by  pressures  out  of  the  nowhere 
of  fitful  circumstance.  Nevertheless,  the  collection 
should  not  be  without  its  own  consistency,  which, 


PREFACE 


•  •  • 

Vlll 

first  of  all,  should  be  that  consistency  of  the  growth 
of  a  characteristic  point  of  view  which  is  (in  their 
author’s  belief)  the  substance  of  every  philosophy. 
Moreover,  the  essays  first-coming  (essays  II- VII) 
should  own  also  the  unity  of  a  single  conception, 
for  they  were  planned  as  a  series,  following  sep¬ 
arately  the  strands  of  a  single  cloth,  and  while  their 
execution  through  a  number  of  years  has  subjected 
them  to  a  piecing  out  of  colors  and  to  minor  modi¬ 
fications  of  design,  the  full  fabric,  it  is  hoped,  is 
true  to  the  major  pattern:  and  it  may,  perchance, 
like  an  Oriental  weaving,  gain  something  in  interest 
from  the  very  variety  which  passing  years  have 
induced.  Of  the  later  essays  no  more  need  be  said 
than  that  they,  too,  follow  the  woof  of  living,  al¬ 
though,  being  of  philosophy,  amid  the  timely  they 
have  endeavored  to  find  out  the  lasting. 

Indebtednesses  in  matters  of  thought,  where  they 
are  not  manifest,  are  frequently  difficult  to  search 
out.  It  should  suffice  that  no  man  is  solely  a  closet 
philosopher  and  that  no  man  thinks  merely  his  own 
thoughts;  and  beyond  this  that  it  is  a  pleasure  for 
the  essayist  to  adorn  his  own  pages  with  citations 
of  those  utterances  out  of  books  which  have  come 
to  him  as  sudden  and  central  illuminations. 

Apart  from  the  brief  exordium,  all  the  essays 
are  here  republished  from  earlier  appearances  in 
periodicals.  They  are  not,  however,  republished 
with  identical  titles  or  with  unmodified  texts :  addi¬ 
tions,  excisions,  alterations — all  that  goes  with  edit¬ 
ing,  they  have  undergone ;  it  is  to  be  hoped,  to  their 
betterment.  The  first  appearances  of  those  here 
included — not,  indeed,  in  the  order  of  their  com¬ 
position — were  as  follows: 


PREFACE 


IX 


“Religion  and  Race  Progress,”  The  Hibbcrt  Journal,  Vol.  IX 
(1910), — there  entitled,  “The  Belief  in  God  and  Immortality 
as  Factors  in  Race  Progress.” 

“The  Evolution  of  Ideals,”  International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
Vol.  XVI  (1906). 

“Truth  and  Nature,”  The  Monist,  Vol.  XX  (1910). 

“The  Goodness  and  Beauty  of  Truth,”  Journal  of  Philosophy, 
Psychology  and  Scientific  Methods,  Vol.  VIII  (1911). 

“Beauty  and  Pain,”  Journal  of  the  American  S.  P.  R.,  Vol. 
VII  (1913), — there  entitled  “Immortality  and  the  Problem 
of  Evil.” 

Epilogue:  “Wrath  and  Ruth,”  Journal  of  Philosophy,  etc., 
Vol.  XVI  (1919). 

“Human  Personality,”  Journal  of  the  American  S.  P.  R.,  Vol. 
I  (1907). 

“The  Socratic  Bergson,”  The  Mid-West  Quarterly,  Vol.  I 
(1913). 

“The  Definition  of  Number,”  The  Monist,  Vol.  XXV  (1915). 

“Plato’s  Conception  of  the  Cosmos,”  The  Monist,  Vol.  XXVIII 
(1918). 

“Music  and  Poetry,”  The  Mid-West  Quarterly,  Vol.  Ill 
(1916). 

“The  Philosophy  of  Tragedy,”  The  Mid-West  Quarterly,  Vol. 
IV  (1916). 

“Art  and  Democracy,”  The  International  Journal  of  Ethics, 
Vol.  XXVIII  (1918).  Delivered  as  presidential  address 

before  the  Western  Philosophical  Association  at  North- 
'western  University,  March,  1918. 

“Hebraism  as  a  Mode  of  Philosophy,”  The  Menorah  Journal, 
Vol.  VI  (1920), — there  entitled,  “The  Hebrew  Contribu¬ 
tion  to  .  the  Americanism  of  the  Future.”  Delivered  as  the 
first  Leopold  Zunz  Memorial  Lecture  before  the  Inter¬ 
collegiate  Menorah  Association,  New  York,  December,  1919. 

“Apologia  pro  Fide,”  The  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XXIX 
(1920).  Delivered  as  presidential  address  before  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Philosophical  Association  at  Cornell  University,  De¬ 
cember,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Preface . vii 

1.  Of  Philosophy . 3 

II.  Religion  and  Race  Progress  ...  9 

III.  The  Evolution  of  Ideals  ....  47 

IV.  Truth  and  Nature . 77 

V.  The  Goodness  and  Beauty  of  Truth  .  112 

/ 

VI.  Beauty  and  Pain . 153 

Epilogue:  Wrath  and  Ruth  .  .  .  217 

VII.  Human  Personality . 228 

VIII.  The  Socratic  Bergson . 301 

IX.  The  Definition  of  Number  .  .  .  319 

X.  Plato's  Conception  of  the  Cosmos  .  .  359 

XI.  Music  and  Poetry . 387 

XII.  The  Philosophy  of  Tragedy  .  .  .  407 

XIII.  Art  and  Democracy . 429 

XIV.  Hebraism  as  a  Mode  of  Philosophy  .  460 

XV.  Apologia  Pro  Fide . 493 

Index . 525 


i 


I 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


ESSAYS  METAPHYSICAL  AND  HISTORICAL 


Vain  is  the  discourse  of  that  philosophy  by  which  no  human 
suffering  is  eased. 


— Epicurus. 


Living  without  philosophy  is  just  like  having  the  eyes  closed 
without  trying  to  open  them;  and  the  pleasure  of  seeing  every¬ 
thing  that  is  revealed  to  our  sight  is  not  comparable  to  the 
satisfaction  which  is  given  by  the  knowledge  of  those  things 
which  are  opened  up  to  us  by  philosophy. 


— Descartes. 


I.  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


Philosophy  is  the  love  of  wisdom,  and  the 
philosopher’s  task  is  the  quest  of  truth.  These 
are  old  sayings  which  because  of  their  oft- repetition 
evade  the  vaguenesses  which  really  beset  them,  for 
neither  the  wisdom  which  is  beloved  nor  the  truth 
which  is  sought  by  philosophers  is  simply  definable ; 
their  conceptual  colors,  the  heights  of  their  ambi¬ 
tions,  vary  as  do  the  tempers  of  the  minds  which 
are  their  vessels,  until  it  were  a  willful  blindness 
to  find  in  the  unity  of  their  ritual  formula  a  unity 
of  faith.  The  laughter  of  Democritus  and  the  tears 
of  Heraclitus  reflect  antithesis,  not  oneness,  in  phil¬ 
osophic  wisdom ;  and  there  is  little  resemblance 
between  truth  absolute  and  truth  pragmatic,  each 
ardently  avowed;  nor  does  the  arrogance  of  the 
cosmist  readily  fall,  even  for  comparison,  with  the 
fainter  assumptions  of  that  humanism  over  against 
which  it  is  set.  Neither  in  beginning  nor  in  end 
are  philosophic  wisdom  and  truth  of  undivided 
fabric. 

It  is  the  part,  therefore,  of  one  who  essays  the 
philosophic  adventure  to  present  something  of  the 
promise  which  for  him  it  has,  something  of  its 
hopes,  expectations,  motives.  What  is  the  nature  of 
the  wisdom  sought?  what  is  the  truth  anticipated? 
Like  Epicurus  does  he  seek  but  the  solace  of  human 
ills?  With  Spinoza  would  he  learn  the  True  Way 
from  the  bondage  of  sense  to  the  freedom  of  ideas? 
Or  with  Hegel  would  he  cast  the  net  of  logical 

3 


The  wisdom 
of 

Philosophers 


Its  promise 


4 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Disagree¬ 
ments  of 
Philosophers 


Humanism 


form  over  all  that  is  and  snare  Eternity  in  its 
moments?  .  .  .  Does  not  the  very  asking  of  these 
questions  indicate  the  one  possible  reply?  The  old 
jibe  flung  at  the  disagreements  of  philosophers  has 
a  certain  point;  for  there  have  been  thinkers  (high 
dogmatists  of  the  cosmos)  whose  speculative  ambi¬ 
tion  has  soared  unto  the  heaven  above  the  heavens 
and  who  have  deemed  that  in  the  glass  of  their 
mind’s  thought  the  confines  of  being  are  mimetically 
charted, — a  vast  faith,  and  a  vain  one.  But  not  all, 
nay,  not  the  greater  part,  of  philosophy  is  cast  in 
this  grandiose  measure.  Over  against  the  cosmists 
have  been  set  the  humanists,  who,  with  Socrates, 
would  summon  philosophy  down  from  the  heavens 
and  make  it  a  familiar  in  the  houses  and  walks  of 
men.  For  them,  as  for  Plato,  the  magniloquent 
dogmatisms  of  the  Naturalists  and  the  high  liturgies 
of  the  Absolutists  are  alike  but  superb  myths,  at 
once  admirable  in  their  zeal  and  pathetic  in  their 
disaster;  and  for  them,  as  for  all  who  find  the 
stream  of  this  life’s  experience  turbid  and  fierce- 
swollen,  the  little  art  that  can  be  gained  from  its 
muddied  reflections  is  but  the  art  of  steer smanship 
toward  dim-lighted  ends — -that  precious  but  perilous 
steer  smanship  of  the  soul  which  Plato  named  the 
Truth. 

They  realize,  these  humanists,  both  the  necessity 
for  reasoning  and  the  weaknesses  of  the  reason. 
They  instinctively  own  the  nobility  of  the  life  of 
reason,  and  it  is  this  instinct  which  makes  of  them 
philosophers.  But  they  are  not  deluded  into  an 
idolatry  of  reason’s  forms  nor  into  superstitious 
adulation  of  its  material  embodiments,  ranged  in  the 
bizarre  pantheon  of  the  sciences.  VvwOl  aeavrov  is 


OF  PHILOSOPHY 


5 


their  warning  oracle ;  and  while  they  are  well  aware 
that  even  knowledge  of  their  own  human  natures  is 
but  a  kind  of  precarious  balance  between  the  abysses 
which  underlie  animalism  and  the  glooms  which  Know 
over-cloud  man’s  highest  insights,  nevertheless  ^^yself 
they  cling  to  this  balance  as  the  one  power  which 
holds  them,  head-erect,  as  men.  The  life  of  reason 
is  for  them  no  disengaged  clairvoyance,  piercing  to 
the  foundations  of  the  world;  rational  judgment  is 
no  fetish  power  set  grimly  to  govern  all ;  rather,  rea¬ 
son  is  but  one  exacting  faculty  in  the  complex  of 
exacting  faculties  which  compose  us;  it  is  limited 
and  compressed  between  welling  impulses  from  be¬ 
low  and  unrelenting  faiths  from  above,  and  its  life 
is  our  human  life  phantasmically  shaping  itself, 
sequent  to  our  phantasmic  animal  past,  anticipative 
of  our  phantasmically  humaner  future.  There  is 
little  that  it  can  formulate  unto  itself;  less  that  it 
can  express  unto  others ;  it  is  but  a  tempestive  steers- 
manship,  perilously  precious. 

The  life  of  reason, — this  is  philosophy  as  the 
humanist  conceives  it.  But  the  phrase  is  not  with¬ 
out  its  own  crafty  subterfuges,  for  it  has  been  used 
to  cloak  what  is  no  more  than  a  disdainful  with-  Reason 
drawal  from  all  affecting  and  intimate  human  in¬ 
terests.  There  is  no  form  of  asceticism  which  is 
cruder  to  the  nature  which  it  mutilates;  there  is 
no  treachery  which  more  haplessly  sells  the  soul. 

Reason  by  itself,  disembodied,  dissected  out, — rea¬ 
son  in  splendid  isolation, — is  no  more  than  a  ghostly 
and  a  ghastly  and  a  dismembered  life;  and  there  is 
philosopher.  For  him  wisdom  is  to  be  got  only 
no  truth  in  it;  it  is  the  delusion,  not  the  road,  of  the 
through  the  more  generous  and  vital  rationalitj 

2— May,  1923 


6 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Reason  is 
metaphor 


The 

key-tropes 


Mechanism 


which  comes  with  the  realization  that  words  and 
numbers  are  at  best  but  glosses  upon  the  margins 
of  life,  which  is  aware  that  the  human  meaning  of 
the  text  is  a  leaping  together  of  its  whole  moving 
discourse,  and  indeed  that  our  rationalizations  are 
but  man  anatomized.  Nay,  it  is  no  figment  of  imag¬ 
ination  to  assert  that  all  that  we  mean  by  intel¬ 
ligibility  and  understanding,  and  all  that  we  conclude 
in  science  and  art  and  philosophy,  is  based  upon  one 
of  two  elementary  forms  of  our  experience  of  our¬ 
selves;  all  expression  is  metaphor,  and  the  core  of 
all  metaphors  is  in  the  body  and  soul  of  man.  There 
are  many  doctrinaire  names  for  the  two  key-tropes : 
number  and  idea,  integral  and  organic  unity,  are 
the  commoner  antithetical  expressions;  but  all  hark 
back  ultimately  to  the  years  of  a  man’s  life  and  the 
bones  of  a  man’s  body.  Birth  and  death  are,  indeed, 
the  ultimates  of  thought  as  they  are  of  life,  and 
philosophies,  and  human  knowledge  generally,  is 
modelled  upon  one  image  or  the  other.  For  con¬ 
sider  first  the  philosophies  of  the  dead:  the  mate¬ 
rialisms,  the  mechanisms,  the  mathematical  real¬ 
isms, — what  figure  gives  them  form  save  that  of 
the  machine,  with  its  revolutions  and  repetitions 
of  idle  motion?  and  what  is  the  ultimate  of  this 
machine, — joints,  leverages,  articulations,  rigid  in¬ 
teractions, — save  the  skeleton  of  a  man  ?  Its  meas¬ 
ures  are  all  derivative  from  the  inch,  foot,  yard, 
pace,  which  are  the  thumb-bones,  foot-bones,  arm- 
bones,  leg-bones  of  a  man;  its  counters  are  the 
numbers  which  are  all  told  out  by  the  digits  of 
men’s  limbs;  and  its  conclusions  are  all  the  infini¬ 
tesimal  comminutions  of  physical  decay — atomic 
dust  returned  to  atomic  dust.  All  philosophies 


OF  PHILOSOPHY 


7 


which  spread  piecemeal  in  space  a  world  of  atom^ 
ized  things, — relations,  positions,  numbers, — are 
philosophies  of  the  image  of  death,  which  never 
articulate  and  move  save  in  a  kind  of  senseless 
danse.  Macabre;  and  the  reason  which  they  know  is 
but  the  burial  of  reason.  Of  the  other  image,  that 
of  generation  and  of  life  and  of  the  beauty  of  all 
things  juvenescent,  are  issued  the  philosophies  of 
the  Whole,  opulent  with  imaginings.  For  them  the 
arc  of  a  man’s  days,  and  above  all  the  promise  of 
them  as  in  an  eternal  infancy,  is  the  form  of  truth; 
and  they  are  splendid  with  poetic  beauty  and  ethic 
zeal :  they  lead  on  into  a  Cosmos  which  is  no  vast 
mausoleum,  bone-built,  but  is  rather  a  conqueror’s 
Triumph,  all  time  its  way.  They  are  more  beau¬ 
tiful,  these  idealisms,  far  more  beautiful  and  in¬ 
spiring  than  the  dead  materialisms ;  they  are  as  the 
blooming  babe  to  the  rigor  mortis;  but  are  they 
more  true? 

Not  less  SO,  certainly.  The  two  are  the  terms  of 
our  reasoning;  the  two  are  bounding  and  conjoined 
experiences.  In  our  being  they  stand  as  body  and 
soul;  in  our  minds  as  object  and  subject;  in  our 
philosophies  as  nature  and  human  nature.  Of  their 
interlacings  beyond  the  range  of  human  experience, 
who  shall  speak  save  by  conjectural  analogy? 
Anciently,  Protagoras  said  that  Man  is  the  measure 
of  all  things  knowable;  and  the  progress  of  human 
knowledge  has  been  but  a  comment  upon  this  say¬ 
ing.  Nevertheless,  in  this  comment,  not  all  is  of 
equal  significance.  For  the  humanist,  at  least,  there 
is  an  essential  wisdom  in  the  emendment  of  the 
saying — Plato  having  transpired — which  is  Aris¬ 
totle’s,  namely,  that  it  is  the  good  man  who  is  the 


The  image 
of  Life 


Homo 

mensura 


8 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


measure  of  all.  Here,  indeed,  is  the  key  to  his  whole 
code;  for  humanistically  philosophy  is  the  quest  of 
that  truth  which  is  knowledge  of  man’s  best  self 
and  of  that  wisdom  which  can  make  of  this  truth 
a  spiritual  helmsman.  No  doubt,  beyond  man’s  life 
and  reflected  in  man’s  life  there  is  an  engulfing 
The  World  Somewhat  (which  “the  Sophists  name  the  World”)  ; 

but  if  it  be  Chaos  or  if  it  be  Cosmos,  can  the  meas¬ 
ures  which  are  a  man’s  bones  or  the  measures  which 
are  a  man’s  years,  can  these  say? 

The  Good  Man  who  is  the  measure  of  all — how 
shall  he  be  discovered?  Surely  not  alone  through 
that  goodness  which  answers  intellectual  curiosity, 
the  Truth  of  science;  surely  not  alone  through  that 
goodness  which  fans  and  fevers  the  imagination, 
that  Beauty  which  is  also  the  truth  of  art;  nor  yet 
alone  through  that  goodness  which  is  the  truth  of 
Righteousness,  and  the  beauty  of  Holiness,  and  the 
heroism  of  Nobility.  Not  through  one  of  these 
alone  shall  the  humanist  find  his  philosophic  meas¬ 
ure,  nor  the  full  stature  of  wisdom;  not  through 
one,  and  perchance  not  through  all,  for  while  he 
must  assuredly  be  pure  in  his  devotion  to  each  and 
assured  that  there  is  no  worthy  philosophy  without 
this  devotion,  yet  he  must  also  own,  at  the  last, 
that  no  one  philosophic  vision  can  become  the  Phi¬ 
losophy  of  mankind,  that  no  one  man’s  wisdom  can 
be  more  than  a  flicker  whence  another  shall  light 
his  forward  torch.  For  the  splendor  of  philosophy, 
after  all,  is  the  splendor  of  many  lights  in  many 
The  Pattern  magnitudes ;  the  splendor  of  all  thought  which  leads, 
Man  and  will  continue  to  lead  men  forward,  until,  as 

each  for  himself,  so  all  for  the  cause  of  all,  shall 
limn  redemptively  the  undying  image  of  the  Pattern 
Man. 


II.  RELIGION  AND  RACE 
PROGRESS 


Nous  trouverons,  dans  I’experience  du  passe,  dans  Tobserva- 
tion  des  progres.  que  les  sciences,  que  la  civilisation  ont  faits 
jusqu’ici,  dans  I’analyse  de  la  marche  de  I’esprit  humain  et  du 
developpement  de  ses  facultes,  les  motifs  les  plus  forts  de 
croire  que  la  nature  n’a  mis  aucun  terme  a  nos  esperances. 

—  Condorcet. 


I 


IT  was  while  in  hiding  from  the  Terror,  under  the 
shadow  of  the  guillotine  and  but  a  few  months 
removed  from  such  death,  that  the  Marquis  de  Con¬ 
dorcet  composed  that  Esquisse  d\m  tableau  histo- 
rique  des  progres  de  P esprit  humain  which  was  de¬ 
voted  to  an  idealization  of  man  and  his  civilization 
and  to  the  voicing  of  the  enthusiastic  belief  that 
Nature  sets  no  term  to  our  hopes  for  human  prog¬ 
ress.  In  the  intensity  of  his  faith  in  man,  in  the 
zeal  of  his  confidence  in  the  powers  of  our  intelli¬ 
gence  to  effect  our  mortal  salvation,  de  Condorcet 
is  but  the  child  of  his  century,  breathing  the  lib¬ 
eralism  of  its  hopes  and  the  intoxication  of  its 
new-found  science;  but  surely  among  all  the  men 
who  in  his  day  shared  in  his  superb  madness,  he — 
retaining  his  faith  even  while  hunted  to  the  death 
by  the  blood-lust  of  his  fellows — most  deserves  the 
admiration  which  must  ever  go  to  noble  folly.  For 
the  hundred  years  which  have  passed  since  the 
Terror  flared  and  faded  have  seen  strange  contra¬ 
dictions  develop  both  in  our  conceptions  of  Nature 
and  of  Human  Nature,  and  in  our  civilization 


Condorcet 
on  the 
Progress  of 
Mankind 


Nature  and 

Human 

Nature 


9 


10 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

Eighteenth 
Century  in 
retrospect 


Evolution 

and 

Humanity 


strange  monstrosities.  Faiths  not  less  vain,  but 
surely  less  fine;  hopes  not  less  huge,  but  surely  less 
noble,  have  come  to  be  ours ;  and  multitudinous  con¬ 
fusions,  the  noise  of  conflicting  voices,  taking  away 
all  simplicity  and  singleness  from  our  lives.  A  smile 
and  a  sigh,  the  one  sophisticated,  the  other  sad,  is 
all  with  which  today  we  can  lay  aside  the  splendid 
but  vainly  glowing  picture  of  human  progress  which 
the  eighteenth  century  imagined.  Our  civilization 
is  not  of  that  thing. 

What  indeed  did  the  nineteenth  century  give,  save 
the  lie  to  eighteenth  century  beliefs  ?  Its  great  con¬ 
tribution  to  thought  was  the  conception  of  Evolu¬ 
tion,  cosmic  and  human,  and  because  the  word  is  a 
sounding  word,  tickling  the  ears  with  vanity,  it 
seemed  for  a  time  'to  give  beautiful  support  to  all 
that  the  Revolutions  hoped:  was  there  not  in  the 
very  naming  of  it  but  another  proof  of  perpetual 
progress?  Indeed,  the  two  terms.  Evolution  and 
Progress,  came  to  be  unthinking  synon3ms,  their 
distinction  lost  in  their  mutual  bruit:  and  both  be¬ 
came  engrossed  in  the  liturgy  of  a  new  idolatry  of 
Man  (not  in  his  form  and  pattern  but  in  his  embod¬ 
ied  mortality),  which  was  to  become  that  cult  of 
the  pleasured  senses  which  we  name  our  civili¬ 
zation.  But  essentially  nineteenth-century  Evolu¬ 
tion  belied  eighteenth-century  Humanity:  the  latter 
was  in  spirit,  if  not  in  form,  Christian,  for  its  cen¬ 
tral  tenet,  like  the  central  tenet  of  the  mission  of 
Jesus,  was  belief  in  men,  in  all  men,  however  born; 
whereas  of  the  creed  of  the  evolutionists,  in  science 
and  in  politics,  the  central  tenet  is  the  distinction  of 
men  into  high  and  low,  superior  and  inferior,  fit 
and  cursed,  and  hence  all  the  intolerable  cant  of  the 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


11 


“white  man’s  burden”  and  the  intolerable  hypocrisy 
of  the  redemptive  mission  of  European  culture. 

Do  we  in  sooth  know  ourselves  so  well  ?  Are  we 
so  sure  of  our  own  sanity?  We  have  lived  a  con¬ 
tradiction,  in  our  politics  professing  a  democratic 
faith  in  man  which  in  our  science  and  industry  we 
have  denied;  and  can  a  lasting  truth  be  founded 
in  a  living  lie?  .  .  .  Nay,  more,  is  it  today  in  our 
hands  to  be  world-masters  and  yet  not  captains  of 
our  own  souls?  Or  is  there  no  essential  Man, 
superior  to  all  civilizations,  all  evolutions,  indepen¬ 
dent  of  all  progress  save  the  spiritual,  whom  we  can 
better  save  in  ourselves  in  our  better  generosity  to 
our  fellows?  With  a  faith  that  might  be  sublime 
were  its  object  not  our  complacent  selves  we 
assume  the  immeasurable  superiority  of  our  institu¬ 
tions  and  conventions,  not  only  over  those  which 
varying  peoples  do  actually  possess,  but  also  over 
all  that  exist  in  them  potentially.  Ourselves  were 
not  created  in  a  day,  and  shall  we  forget,  in  wanton 
pride,  that  with  each  extinguished  racial  culture 
there  dies  a  possibility  of  world-riches,  which,  in 
its  own  good  time  might  have  come  to  fruition? 
We  know  well  what  has  befallen  the  Red  Indian. 
Whatever  the  faults  of  his  native  savagery,  it  was 
not  without  promise.  Today  all  the  possibilities  of 
Indian  genius  are  vanished,  and  the  world  must  ever 
remain  the  poorer  for  what  the  Red  Man  might 
have  given  it  had  the  fates  been  kindlier  or  we  less 
arrogant  in  ignorance  and  prejudice. 

II 

Surely  before  we  assume  the  inviolable  worth 
of  our  civilization  we  should  gain  comprehension 


The  conceit 
of 

Civilization 


The 

Red  Indian 


12 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

evolution  of 
Ideals  is  not 
analogous  to 
biophysical 
evolution 


of  the  ideals  of  life  in  which  it  is  founded  and  to 
which  it  trains  men ;  before  we  too  zealously  devote 
ourselves  to  commercial  or  intellectual  or  religious 
propaganda  we  should  make  certain  of  the  benefits 
which  our  commerce,  our  science,  our  creeds  can 
bestow.  Clear  perspective  alone  can  insure  rational 
as  well  as  clean  motives  in  the  work  of  civilizing, — 
and  not  the  least  gift  of  perspective  is  the  light  in 
which  it  will  throw  our  own  ideals. 

There  is  but  one  point  of  view  from  which  it  is 
profitable  to  consider  the  question.  Ideals  are,  of 
all  human  creations,  the  most  intimately  historical 
in  character;  and  it  is  only  the  study  of  history 
that  can  assure  us  of  sound  understandings  of  ideal 
intentions.  This  is  not  evolutionism;  ideals  have 
their  own  evolution,  their  own  natural  unfoldment, 
but  it  is  mere  confusion  of  thought  to  identify  in 
form  the  conscious  maturing  of  human  nature  in 
conscious  human  institutions  with  the  changing 
swirls  of  a  cosmic  dust  or  the  blind  succession  of 
earth’s  fiora  and  fauna.  The  identification  has  been 
attempted;  and  it  has  led  to  bizarre  social  theory 
and  to  horrible  politics.  Surely  the  hour  is  come 
for  the  more  tempered  return  to  those  foundations 
in  thought  and  to  that  expression  in  literature  which 
reveal  most  truly  what  ideals  human  experience  and 
reflection  have  hitherto  made  fundamental  to  human 
conduct.  Man’s  written  word,  his  bequeathed  tradi¬ 
tion,  is  his  challenge  to  death;  history  is  his  judg¬ 
ment  upon  nature. 

By  way  of  broad  generalization  we  may  dis¬ 
criminate  historic  ideals  as  of  two  types:  (1)  The 
ideal  of  a  life  devoted  to  some  interest  beyond  its 
own  powers  of  realization — a  life  devoted  to  a  com- 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


13 


munity,  whether  this  be  family,  tribe,  nation,  church, 
or  the  total  of  humanity;  and  (2)  the  ideal  of  a  life 
bent  upon  realizing  to  the  full  its  own  possibilities, 
whether  of  sensuous  pleasure,  of  personal  aggran¬ 
dizement,  or  of  spiritual  exaltation.  The  communal 
ideal  and  the  individual  ideal — these  appear  through¬ 
out  the  history  of  mind,  either  in  antagonism  or  in 
compromise,  as  fundamental  life-motives;  and  to 
these,  in  historic  relation,  our  argument  will  turn. 

Ill 

Obviously  the  primitive  ideal  is  the  communal. 
The  very  existence  of  human  society,  under  primitive 
conditions,  is  dependent  on  the  notion  of  fidelity  to 
the  commune — to  clan,  or  tribe,  or  nation.  Indeed, 
it  is  this  fidelity — the  cement  of  society — which 
makes  of  man  Man  instead  of  Brute.  “For  perhaps 
thousands  of  years,’’ — I  quote  Francis  Gummere, — 
“humanity  was  hovering  on  the  far  border  of  com¬ 
munal  organization,  and  led  a  mainly  selfish  and 
unsocial  life”;  and  when  the  passage  from  selfish 
to  social,  from  brute  to  human,  did  take  place,  “as 
with  the  earth  itself,  these  psychical  changes  were 
volcanic.” 

With  our  Germanic  ancestry,  after  courage  in 
battle,  the  loftiest  of  virtues  was  faithfulness  to  the 
chieftain  or  leader,  the  hero,  who  incarnated  in  his 
person  and  spirit  the  tribal  ideal.  So  important  was 
this  virtue  that,  says  Tacitus  (voicing  the  very  spirit 
of  the  Forty  Ronin  at  the  other  edge  of  the  world), 
“shame  and  utter  ruin  of  all  reputation  are  his  who 
leaves  the  battlefield  alive,  after  his  prince  has 
fallen.”  And  in  his  estimate  of  ancient  German 
character  Gummere  writes : 


Types  of 
ideal 


Fidelity 


The 

Germanic 
ideal  of 
Virtue 


14 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Ruedeger 


The 

Chivalric 

ideal 


Fidelity  to  chieftain  and  king  redeems  and  raises  Hagen  of 
the  Nibelungen  Lay  from  a  mere  assassin  at  the  outset  to  a 
splendid  hero  at  the  end.  The  character  of  Ruedeger  in  the 
same  Lay  shows  us  a  situation  as  acute  as  any  Greek  tragedy 
can  produce.  Not  even  Orestes,  with  filial  duty  dragging  him 
in  opposite  directions,  is  so  completely  tragical  a  figure  as  this 
Germanic  warrior  halting  in  agony  between  disobedience  to  his 
lord  and  battle  with  his  guests  and  son-in-law;  it  is  instructive 
to  note  that  in  this  struggle  between  kin-duty  and  vassal-duty, 
the  latter  conquers.  Finally,  we  may  mark  that  when  mis¬ 
sionaries  came  into  the  Germanic  lands  to  preach  Christ  and 
his  twelve  apostles,  nothing  appealed  more  actively  to  the 
native  than  the  resemblance  of  this  bond  between  master  and 
disciple  to  his  own  system  of  chieftain  and  clansmen.  Christ 
died  for  his  beloved,  and  they  endured  martyrdom  for  him. 
What  simpler  theology? 

In  this  primitive  stage  the  individual’s  devotion 
to  the  commune  is  given  form  and  intensity  by  the 
concrete  personality  of  the  Leader.  The  Hero  and 
the  Heroic  Family  gather  into  themselves  the  ideality 
of  the  whole  group, — as,  in  a  sense,  the  Saviour  and 
the  Holy  Family  figure  the  ideal  of  Christendom. 
A  man’s  troth  is  his  fidelity  to  society  under  the 
form  of  its  incarnate  head. 

The  same  fidelity,  beautified  and  broadened  by 
compassion,  underlies  the  Mediaeval  ideal  of  Chiv¬ 
alry  and  knightly  troth.  Save  this :  In  the  Mediaeval 
mode  of  conception  the  devotion  of  faith  is  tendered 
at  once  to  an  outward  and  earthly  lord  and  to  an 
inward  and  heavenly.  Nowhere  more  finely  is  the 
chivalric  ideal  expressed  than  in  the  oath  of  King 
Arthur’s  knights  of  the  Round  Table: 

Then  the  king  stablished  all  his  knights,  and  gave  them  that 
were  of  lands  not  rich,  he  gave  them  lands,  and  charged  them 
never  to  do  outrageousity  nor  murder,  and  always  to  flee  trea¬ 
son;  also,  by  no  means  to  be  cruel,  but  to  give  mercy  unto 
him  that  asketh  mercy,  upon  pain  of  forfeiture  of  their  worship 
and  lordship  of  King  Arthur  for  evermore;  and  always  to  do 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


15 


ladies,  damosels,  and  gentlewomen  succour,  upon  pain  of  death. 
Also,  that  no  man  take  no  battles  in  a  wrongful  quarrel  for 
no  law,  nor  for  no  world’s  goods.  Unto  this  were  all  the 
knights  sworn  of  the  Table  Round,  both  old  and  young.  And 
every  year  were  they  sworn  at  the  high  feast  of  Pentecost. 

But  the  chivalric  ideal  is  still  that  of  a  personal 
relationship,  even  if  this  relationship  be  idealized. 
For  a  more  advanced  type  of  the  communal  ideal 
we  must  turn  to  that  other  great  root  of  European 
civilization — the  culture  of  the  classic  nations. 

In  societies  characterized  by  fixed  settlements, — 
by  a  fatherland,  reverence  for  the  tombs  of  ances¬ 
tors,  and  that  sense  of  a  hallowed  soil  which  the 
ancient  imagination  expressed  to  itself  under  the 
manifold  forms  of  the  di  indigetes, — the  ideal  of  the 
City  and  the  City’s  future,  of  all  that  a  nation  and  a 
nation’s  posterity  can  mean  to  the  nation’s  builders, 
replaces  the  more  personal  ideal  of  a  simpler  culture. 
So  we  find  developed  the  classic  conception  of  civic 
patriotism :  devotion  to  one’s  native  city,  not  for 
the  sake  of  its  rulers,  nor  for  the  sake  of  one’s  fel¬ 
low-citizens,  nor  yet  in  any  altruistic  sense  for  the 
sake  of  the  community  as  the  common  interest  of  its 
several  members,  but  rather  for  the  city  itself  as  an 
ideal :  Athens  as  deified  in  Athenian  imagination, 
Rome  for  its  Roman  Imperium ! 

Our  modern  socialisms  are  all  constructed  with 
a  view  to  the  comfort  and  well-being  of  the  in¬ 
dividual  (the  average  individual)  ;  in  last  resort, 
they  are  designed  for  a  purely  subjective  and  im¬ 
palpable  individualism,  a  chimerical  average  happi¬ 
ness.  The  classic  ideal  is  at  the  opposite  pole.  “A 
state,”  says  Aristotle,  “is  not  a  mere  aggregate  of 
persons,  but  a  union  of  them  sufficing  for  the  pur¬ 
poses  of  life.”  And  the  great  purpose  of  life  is  the 


The  Classic 
ideal 


The  City 


Aristotle’s 
conception 
of  the  state 


16 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Athens 
of  Pericles 


The  end 
is  action 


deed  of  the  State.  ‘‘A'  city,  like  an  individual,  has 
a  work  to  do” ;  and  ‘‘that  city  which  is  best  adapted 
to  the  fulfilment  of  its  work  is  to  be  deemed  the 
greatest.” 

The  gap  which  separates  the  modern  socialistic 
ideal  of  adipose  bliss  from  the  ancient  vision  of  a 
City  of  Man,  man-created  yet  god-like  in  its  bright 
supremacy  over  individual  wish  and  power,  must 
broaden  in  the  mind  of  every  reader  of  the  great 
“Funeral  Speech”  which  Thucydides  puts  on  the 
tongue  of  Pericles : 

....  We  do  not  anticipate  pain,  although,  when  the  hour 
comes,  we  can  be  as  brave  as  those  who  never  allow  themselves 
to  rest;  and  thus  too  our  city  is  equally  admirable  in  peace  and 
in  war. 

For  we  are  lovers  of  the  beautiful,  yet  simple  in  our  tastes, 
and  we  cultivate  the  mind  without  loss  of  manliness. 

Wealth  we  employ,  not  for  talk  and  ostentation,  but  when 
there  is  a  real  use  for  it.  To  avow  poverty  with  us  is  no  dis¬ 
grace;  the  true  disgrace  is  in  doing  nothing  to  avoid  it. 

An  Athenian  citizen  does  not  neglect  the  state  because  he 
takes  care  of  his  own  household;  and  even  those  of  us ^ who 
are  engaged  in  business  have  a  very  fair  idea  of  politics.  We 
alone  regard  a  man  who  takes  no  interest  in  public  affairs,  not 
as  a  harmless,  but  as  a  useless  character;  and  if  few  of  us  are 
originators,  we  are  all  sound  judges  of  a  policy. 

The  great  impediment  to  action  is,  in  our  opinion,  not  dis¬ 
cussion,  but  the  want  of  that  knowledge  which  is  gained  by  dis¬ 
cussion  preparatory  to  action.  For  we  have  a  peculiar  power 
of  thinking  before  we  act  and  of  acting  too,  whereas  other 
men  are  courageous  from  ignorance,  but  hesitate  upon  reflec¬ 
tion.  And  they  are  surely  to  be  esteemed  the  bravest  spirits 
who,  having  the  clearest  sense  of  both  the  pains  and  pleasures 
of  life,  do  not  on  that  account  shrink  from  danger.  ^ 

Wealth  is  an  instrument  to  achievement ;  private 
interests  are  subordinate  to  civic  duties;  pain  and 
pleasure  alike  are  accidents  of  a  life,  the  end  of 
which  is  action;  and  the  action  itself  is  worth  while 


Jowett,  Thucydides. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


17 


for  the  sake  of  the  great  Symbol  it  shall  impress 
upon  the  history  of  the  world — the  City  Beautiful : 

In  the  hour  of  trial  Athens  alone  among  her  contemporaries 
is  superior  to  the  report  of  her. 

No  enemy  who  comes  against  her  is  indignant  at  the  re¬ 
verses  which  he  sustains  at  the  hands  of  such  a  city;  no  sub¬ 
ject  complains  that  his  masters  are  unworthy  of  him. 

And  we  shall  assuredly  not  be  without  witnesses;  there  are 
mighty  monuments  of  our  power  which  will  make  us  the 
wonder  of  this  and  of  succeeding  ages.  .  . 

For  we  have  compelled  every  land  and  every  sea  to  open  a 
path  for  our  valor,  and  have  everywhere  planted  eternal 
memorials  of  our  friendship  and  of  our  enmity. 

Such  is  the  city  for  whose  sake  these  men  nobly  fought  and 
died;  they  could  not  bear  the  thought  that  she  might  be  taken 
from  them;  and  every  one  of  us  who  survive  should  gladly 
toil  in  her  behalf. 

It  was  for  such  a  City — and  not  for  the  decaying 
Athens  of  his  own  declining  days — that  Socrates, 
“wronged  by  men,  though  not  by  us,  your  country’s 
Laws,”  chose  the  honor  of  death  rather  than  the 
ignominy  of  flight;  and  it  was  because  the  ideal  of 
such  a  city  glowed  so  bright  in  his  mind  also  that 
Plato  cried  out  in  bitterness  against  the  statesmen 
who  had  “filled  the  city  with  docks  and  arsenals 
and  tributes  and  material  trash,  rather  than  with 
wisdom  and  righteousness.” 

A  more  grandiose,  but  less  noble  conception  ani¬ 
mated  Roman  patriotism.  It  was  the  spectacular 
quality  of  sovereign  rule,  the  pageantry  of  imperial 
dominion,  that  mastered  the  Roman  mind, — 

Tu  regere  imperio  populos,  Romane.  .  . 

“Thine  be  it,  Roman,  to  hold  the  peoples  in  imperial 
sway,  to  impose  on  men  the  law  of  peace,  to  spare 
the  vanquished  and  bring  low  the  proud!”  The 
Empire,  men  believed  (at  least  in  the  age  of  Augus- 


The  Funeral 
Oration 


Roman 

patriotism 


18 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Cosmic 
City 


“Her  Laws 
are  the 
City’s 
Lords” 


tus),  was  a  return  to  that  Golden  Age  of  Peace  and 
Plenty  which  men  of  every  race,  disappointed  in 
present  attainment,  discern  in  a  misty  past, — 

Augustus  Csesar,  divi  genus,  aurea  condet 

saecula  qui  rursus  Latio,  regnata  per  arva 

Saturno  quondam. 

Again  it  is  an  ideal  transcending  both  the  individual 
life  and  the  aggregate  of  individual  lives;  it  is  an 
ideal  commune,  an  ideal  city,  an  ideal  nation,  in 
whose  service  men  find  their  lives  complete. 

The  world-view  developed  by  classic  culture  was 
thus  one  of  a  great  world-polity,  an  organized  com¬ 
mune,  which  yet  derived  from  its  organization  an 
imaginative  value  vastly  finer  than  that  to  be  de¬ 
rived  from  a  conception  of  society  as  a  mere  aggre¬ 
gate  of  members,  or  citizens.  It  is  a  value  that  can 
only  be  expressed  as  that  of  an  organic  whole,  with 
reference  to  which  the  individual  is  a  part.  And 
the  fact  that  such  a  whole  transcends  individual 
lives,  snatches  up  individual  destinies  into  mightier 
destinies,  builds  a  nation’s  fate  out  of  the  particular 
fates  of  men, — this  fact  gives  it  the  impressiveness 
that  requites  men  for  the  service  required  of  them. 
Faith  in  the  nation’s  life  and  destiny  becomes  a 
sufficient  reason  for  the  individual’s  toil  in  its  behalf. 

In  the  Feudal  ideal  Fealty  to  the  Chieftain,  in  the 
Classic  ideal  Citizenship,  becomes  each  the  highest 
expression  of  the  obligation  imposed  and  the  reward 
given  by  the  commune.  Yet,  as  time  clarifies 
thought,  each  takes  on  a  more  sublimated  guise  : 
the  Chieftain  ceases  to  be  an  outward  and  corporeal 
leader,  he  is  made  over  into  an  inward  and  spiritual 
King;  the  City  is  seen  no  longer  as  a  temporal  and 
material  empire,  but  as  the  domain  of  Law, — that 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


19 


Law  which  Heraclitus  named  the  true  ''rampart  of 
the  City,”  and  Plato,  yet  more  nobly:  "Her  Laws 
are  the  City’s  Lords.” 

Herodotus  tells  how  Xerxes,  upon  learning  the 
small  number  of  the  Greeks  resisting  him,  finds  it 
inconceivable  that  they  should  freely  face  such  odds: 
"How  can  a  thousand,  or  ten  thousand,  or  fifty  thou¬ 
sand  men,  of  their  own  free  will,  face  such  a  force 
as  mine?”  he  asks.  And  the  Spartan  answers  for 
his  countrymen:  "O  king,  though  they  are  free¬ 
men,  they  are  not  absolutely  free.  For  over  them 
is  one  master,  the  Law,  whom  they  fear  more  than 
your  subjects  fear  you.  Whatsoever  it  commands, 
they  do;  and  it  ever  commands  the  one  thing,  for¬ 
bidding  them  to  fly  before  any  number  of  men,  but 
to  stand  their  ground  and  conquer  or  die.”  The 
essential  nature  of  the  City  is  an  inner  and  invisible 
nature;  the  homage  which  she  exacts  is  bred  into 
the  fibre  of  her  citizens,  and  becomes  their  true 
spiritual  heritage. 

An  identical  process  creates  the  chivalric  spirit 
which  is  the  offspring  of  feudalism.  "In  their  rule,” 
writes  Rabelais  (and  in  his  Theleme  he  is  thinking 
as  much  of  chivalric  nobility  as  of  monastic  reforma¬ 
tion),  "is  only  this  clause.  Do  as  ye  will.  For  free¬ 
men,  well-born,  well-instructed,  familiar  with  hon¬ 
orable  companionship,  have  by  nature  an  instinct 
and  spur  which  always  impels  them  to  virtuous 
deeds  and  restrains  them  from  vice:  the  which  they 
name  Honor L 

Law  and  Honor — these  two  are  the  great  trans¬ 
mutations  of  Classic  and  Feudal  devotion  to  the 
commune.  There  is  necessary  a  third  quality  before 
the  communal  ideal  can  take  on  its  noblest  mean¬ 
ing.  .  . 


Spartan 

law 


Rabelais 
on  the 
meaning 
of  Honor 


20 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  quest 
of  Sangreal 


Noblesse 

oblige 


Now,  said  Sir  Gawaine,  we  have  been  served  this  day  of 
what  meats  and  drinks  we  thought  on;  but  one  thing  beguiled 
us,  we  might  not  see  the  holy  Grail,  it  was  so  preciously  cov¬ 
ered.  Wherefore  I  will  make  here  avow,  that  tomorn,  without 
longer  abiding,  I  shall  labour  in  the  quest  of  the  Sangreal, 
that  I  shall  hold  me  out  a  twelvemonth  and  a  day,  or  more  if 
need  be,  and  never  shall  I  return  again  unto  the  court  till  I 
have  seen  it  more  openly  than  it  hath  been  seen  here;  and  if 
I  may  not  speed  I  shall  return  again  as  he  that  may  not  be 
against  the  will  of  our  Lord  Jesu  Christ. 

When  they  of  the  Table  Round  heard  Sir  Gawaine  say  so, 
they  arose  up  the  most  part  and  made  such  avows  as  Sir 
Gawaine  had  made. 

Anon  as  King  Arthur  heard  this  he  was  greatly  displeased, 
for  he  wist  well  that  they  might  not  againsay  their  avows. 
Alas,  said  King  Arthur  unto  Sir  Gawaine,  ye  have  nigh  slain 
me  with  the  avow  and  promise  that  ye  have  made;  for  through 
you  ye  have  bereft  me  the  fairest  fellowship  and  the  truest  of 
knighthood  that  ever  were  seen  together  in  any  realm  of  the 
world;  for  when  they  depart  from  hence  I  am  sure  they  all 
shall  never  meet  more  in  this  world,  for  they  shall  die  many  in 
the  quest.  And  so  it  forthinketh  me  a  little,  for  I  have  loved 
them  as  well  as  my  life,  wherefore  it  shall  grieve  me  right 
sore,  the  departition  of  this  fellowship:  for  I  have  had  an  old 
custom  to  have  them  in  my  fellowship. 

Plato  had  directed  men’s  eyes  from  the  outward 
to  the  inner  and  heavenly  City ;  chivalry  turned  men 
from  the  earthly  to  the  heavenly  King:  and  in  this 
change  Christendom  became  possible. 

At  first  the  change  is  only  one  of  degree.  The 
Church  is  the  Church  Militant,  demanding  of  its 
followers  unquestioning  service,  unhesitating  sacri¬ 
fice.  Authority  and  Submission — this  is  the  out¬ 
ward  form.  But  inwardly  a  new  quality  is  added 
to  the  world  ideal.  Greece  and  Rome  developed  the 
ideal  of  Law;  Feudal  Europe  developed  noblesse 
oblige;  Christianity  added  the  ideal  of  the  intrinsic 
value  of  the  average  soul — the  foundation  of  Democ¬ 
racy.  This  is  not  an  individual  character,  but  still 
a  social  one :  the  Church  is  for  humanity,  for  man- 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


21 


kind,  not  for  individual  men;  it  is  humanity’s  com¬ 
mon  and  higher  expression,  the  outward  realization 
of  an  interest  which  demands  not  merely  that  each 
soul  be  saved,  but  that  there  be  a  multitude  of  saved 
souls.  Heaven  must  ring  with  such  a  general  chorus 
of  hosannas  that  it  shall  seem  as  one  eternal  voice 
rising  from  the  congregated  nations  of  the  earth. 
And  so  we  find  arisen  that  augustness  of  tradition 
which  gives  to  the  Roman  Church  its  tremendous 
plea  as  the  visible  embodiment  of  Christendom. 
Jesuit  zeal  is  the  ecclesiastical  version  of  the  efficient 
life,  and  the  temporal  power  of  the  papal  throne  is 
made  the  symbol  of  the  eternal  destinies  of  nations. 

Thus  we  have  again  the  conception  of  an  ideal 
city,  though  the  City  of  God  is  only  mortally  sym¬ 
bolized  by  the  earthly  Church.  Christian  thought 
at  its  best  needs  not  the  earthly  dominion  to  sym¬ 
bolize  the  Dominion  Beyond ;  yet,  even  at  its 
best,  it  never  escapes  this  social  conception, — the 
Heavenly  City  is  still  a  city,  an  idol  of  man’s  earthly 
estate. 

To  us  of  today  Christendom  is  far  more  a  physical 
and  vital  fact  than  we  are  wont  to  think.  It  is  to 
us  something  broader  than  fatherland,  though  less 
than  humanity.  It  is  a  unit,  an  organization  within 
which  we  find  ourselves  unconsciously  placed,  and 
with  respect  to  which  we  as  unconsciously  mould 
our  conduct.  It  is  an  ideal  of  culture,  distinguished 
from  Moslem  culture  and  from  Buddhist  culture, 
to  which  we  instinctively  turn  for  our  best  concep¬ 
tion  of  life.  For  we  have  been  so  long  trained  in 
the  Faith,  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  other  alle¬ 
giance. 

Has  the  conception  of  a  City  of  Man  perhaps 


The  visible 
Church 


The  Ecclesia 
of  God 


3 


22 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  City 
Man 


Democracy 

and 

Christianity 


Individual 

errantry 


already  begun  to  replace  that  of  the  City  of  God? 
Are  we  beginning  to  think  of  Humanity  as  some¬ 
thing  even  more  important  than  Christendom?  Are 
the  continents  of  Earth  uniting  into  one  domain  of 
Man? 

Let  us  not  over-lightly  assent.  True  it  is  that  the 
great  movement  of  the  Enlightenment  followed  the 
disruption  of  the  earthly  Church  and  directed  men’s 
minds  from  Super-nature  to  Nature> — appearing,  as 
it  were,  the  child  of  Protestantism  and  a  sire  of 
Infidelity.  Nevertheless,  even  the  most  positive 
Humanitarianism — naturalistic  and  anti-churchly 
though  it  be — is,  after  all,  but  the  distinctive  expres¬ 
sion  of  Christendom.  Its  deepest  root  is  that  simple 
and  direct  Democracy  which  Jesus,  and  Jesus  alone, 
introduced  into  the  world :  so  that  we  can  fairly  say 
that  the  democratic  sentiment  of  modern  Europe  is 
the  fullest  expression  of  its  Christianity,  and  if 
Humanity  is  to  be  conquered  by  the  European  Idea 
this  will  mean  nothing  short  of  its  final  incorpora¬ 
tion  into  Christendom. 

Such  an  outcome  is  not  unthinkable.  But  if  it 
be  a  purely  social  and  political  outcome,  a  mere 
World-Democracy,  can  it  thereby  satisfy  men’s 
aspirations  ?  Can  a  de-spiritualized  Christianity 
(which  in  point  of  fact  is  what  naturalistic  Humani¬ 
tarianism  amounts  to)  achieve  a  World’s  salvation? 

I  think  the  answer  to  this  is  more  than  fore¬ 
shadowed  in  King  Arthur’s  presentiment.  “We 
have  been  served  this  day,”  said  Sir  Gawaine,  “of 
what  meats  and  drinks  we  thought  on ;  but  one  thing 
beguiled  us.  .  .  And  so  the  Knights  set  forth, 
each  on  his  individual  errantry,  to  suffer  individually 
his  labors,  and  seek  individually  his  reward.  The 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


23 


meats  and  drinks  and  goodly  fellowship  of  the  Table 
Round  could  not  satisfy  the  spiritual  hunger  and 
thirst,  nor  the  troth  of  an  earthly  King — even  in  a 
Golden  Age — hold  immortal  souls  in  a  merely  mortal 
communion. 

All  that  the  Humanitarian  ideal  offers  is  meat  and 
drink  and  fellowship;  but  there  comes  a  time  in 
every  life  that  is  worth  living  when,  with  ‘‘the  clear¬ 
est  sense  of  both  the  pains  and  pleasures  of  life,” 
the  thorny  road  of  individual  salvation  is  chosen: 
even  the  City  must  be  such  that  ‘‘every  one  of  us 
should  gladly  toil  in  her  behalf.” 

IV 

So  much  for  communal  ideals.  There  remains  to 
be  considered  the  conception  of  the  individual  life 
for  its  own  sake — the  worth  of  a  man’s  life  to  him¬ 
self,  apart  from  any  social  element. 

Even  in  primitive  society  we  find  this  counter¬ 
conception  asserting  itself.  At  all  events  there  is  a 
clear  indication  of  the  sense  of  prize  in  personal  life 
in  the  fact  that  among  savages  the  supreme  virtue  is 
contempt  of  death:  all  the  sanctions  of  society,  all 
the  hard  conditions  of  the  struggle  for  existence, 
must  be  utilized  to  create  this  unwonted  mood.  And 
where  raw  indifference  to  life  is  found  impossible, 
there  grows  up  as  a  special  sanction  of  courage  the 
doctrine  of  a  worthier  lot  in  the  world  to  come  for 
the  battle-fallen  hero  than  for  the  ordinary  man. 
So  we  have  the  Moslem’s  lure  of  instant  Paradise 
for  the  battle-slain;  the  Aztec’s  brave  hope  of  a 
future  with  Tonatiuh,  the  Sun, — the  heaven  of  men 
dying  in  battle,  women  dying  in  child-birth,  each  for 
race-preservation;  or  again,  the  old  Norseman’s  iron 


Indi¬ 

vidualism 


The  rewards 
of  Paradise 


24 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Gilgamesh 

Epic 


Ecclesiastes 


The 

Odyssey 


determination  to  escape  the  ‘^straw  death”  and  win 
Valhalla  even  by  the  poor  pretext  of  a  spear-wound 
at  the  hands  of  a  friend. 

He  rests  on  a  couch,  drinking  pure  water, 

Who  died  in  battle  ... 

But  he  whose  body  is  thrown  into  the  field — 

The  leavings  of  the  pot,  remains  of  food, 

What  is  thrown  beside  the  way,  he  eats  .  .  . 

So  speaks  the  Babylonian  Epic  of  Gilgamesh,  mak¬ 
ing  what  poor  division  it  can  of  the  dismal  Under¬ 
world  fates  in  favor  of  the  man  who  gives  up  his 
life  for  society. 

For  even  such  distinction  of  fate  is  poor  compen¬ 
sation  for  the  loss  of  Upperworld  joys  and  the  good 
years  of  a  man’s  life.  “To  him  that  is  joined  to  all 
the  living  there  is  hope;  for  a  living  dog  is  better 
than  a  dead  lion,”  saith  Ecclesiastes.  And  we  all 
remember  the  colloquy  of  Odysseus  and  the  shade 
of  Achilles : 

For  of  old,  in  the  days  of  thy  life,  we  Argives  gave  thee  one 
honor  with  the  gods,  and  now  thou  art  a  great  prince  here 
among  the  dead.  Wherefore  let  not  thy  death  be  any  grief  to 
thee,  Achilles. 

Nay,  speak  not  comfortably  to  me  of  death,  O  great  Odys¬ 
seus.  Rather  would  I  live  on  ground  as  the  hireling  of 
another  with  a  landless  man  who  had  no  great  livelihood,  than 
bear  sway  among  all  the  dead  that  be  departed.^ 

Death  to  the  ancient  was  grimly  physical.  His 
Underworld  contained  no  touch  of  that  grotesque 
and  grisly  activity  which  dominated  the  Mediaeval 
conception  of  the  Danse  Macabre.  Rather,  it  was 
the  spectacle  of  the  powerless  and  decaying  body, 
erstwhile  so  full  of  vital  play,  that  struck  home  to 
men’s  imaginations.  .  . 


Butcher  and  Bang,  Odyssey. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


25 


Dust  is  their  nourishment,  clay  their  food; 

They  do  not  see  light,  they  dwell  in  darkness; 

Clothed  like  a  bird  whose  folded  wings  are  its  covering. 

So  the  Babylonian  laments  his  dead;  and  Job, — 

They  shall  lie  down  alike  in  the  dust, 

And  the  worms  shall  cover  them  .  .  . 

The  clods  of  the  valley  shall  be  sweet  unto  them. 

I  cite  these  instances  of  the  ancient  and  primitive 
feeling  of  the  horror  of  death  because  they  seem 
most  sharply  to  emphasize  the  converse  conviction 
of  the  joy  of  living — that  delight  in  the  mere  exer¬ 
cise  of  vital  function  which  we  customarily  think 
of  as  the  ‘‘pagan”  spirit.  We  have  in  us  too  much 
of  the  heritage  of  Christian  asceticism,  with  its  long- 
cultivated  contempt  for  the  world  of  the  flesh,  to 
feel  spontaneous  sympathy  with  the  ancient  delight 
in  riot  of  sense  and  zestful  play.  The  notion  that 
a  child  should  be  grateful  to  the  parent  solely  be¬ 
cause  the  latter  has  brought  to  him  the  “most  sweet 
light”  of  this  life,  startles  us  when  we  meet  it  in 
Cicero;  and  I  am  afraid  that  we  have  even  less  sym¬ 
pathy  than  Plato  with  the  lament  of  age: 

I  cannot  eat,  I  cannot  drink;  the  pleasures  of  youth  and 
love  are  fled  away;  there  was  a  good  time  once,  but  now  that 
is  gone,  and  life  is  no  longer  life.® 

Paganism  takes  the  mere  joy  of  living  to  be  the 
sufficient  justification  of  life.  But  Paganism  is  a 
mood  rather  than  an  ideal  of  life;  it  is  a  sort  of 
natural  Hedonism,  not  with  any  reflective  conscious¬ 
ness  of  pleasure  as  its  end,  but  bent  upon  activity 
just  for  the  sake  of  the  exuberance  activity  brings. 
It  belongs  to  the  child-life  of  the  race,  having  in 

*This  and  other  citations  from  Plato  are  from  Jowett’s  Dialogues, 
occasionally  with  modifications. 


Book  of  Job 


Christian 

asceticism 


De  senectute 


26 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Hedonism  is 
philoso¬ 
phized 
Paganism 


Carpe  diem 


i^^stheticism 


it  all  the  naivete  of  childhood,  and  it  cannot  be  per¬ 
petuated  into  the  years  of  our  race  maturity. 

Paganism  philosophized  is  Sensuism.  And  we 
find  this  outcome  realized  as  soon  as  the  pagan  mind 
had  come  to  philosophical  self-study.  The  ideal  of 
the  Cyrenaics  was  the  life  of  sensation  for  its  own 
sake,  the  test  of  the  worth  of  sensations  being  their 
power  to  yield  pleasure.  Sensuous  pleasure,  in  other 
words,  is  made  the  measure  of  life’s  worth. 

This  is  susceptible  of  various  interpretations,  and 
has  received  them.  In  the  first  instance  we  have 
the  earthy  ideal  of  gross  gratification  of  appetite: 
‘‘Let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  tomorrow  we  die.”  Such 
an  ideal  is  more  or  less  furthered  by  materialistic 
philosophies,  and  is  become  a  factor  to  be  reckoned 
with  in  modern  ethics.  It  is  an  entirely  intelligible 
conception  of  good,  and  is  capable  of  unanswerable 
defence,  once  the  individualistic  right  to  judge  on 
purely  private  grounds  is  conceded.  Like  solipsistic 
scepticism,  its  logic  is  invulnerable  if  its  premises 
be  granted. 

A  second  phase  of  paganism  is  the  sophisticated 
living  for  mere  breadth,  mere  multiplicity  of  con¬ 
tacts  with  the  world  of  sense.  This  usually  appears 
as  a  defence  for  the  license  often  demanded  for  the 
artistic  nature.  At  its  best  it  resolves  into  ^sthet- 
icism — the  quest  of  delicate  perfumes,  of  subtile 
harmonies  of  tone  and  color,  luxuries  of  refined  in¬ 
dulgence.  It  may  even  take  a  properly  ethical  cast, 
urging  a  world-ideal  of  the  “life  beautiful”  for  the 
sake  of  its  aesthetic  appeal.  Pater  is,  of  course,  the 
modem  exemplar  of  this  type  of  theory,  which  was 
by  no  means  without  adherents  in  the  decadent  years 
of  ancient  culture. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


27 


A  third  development  of  the  pagan  ideal  is  that 
which  finds  its  realization  in  appropriation :  in  attain¬ 
ment  of  goods  and,  above  all,  what  goods  stand  for 
and  enable — worldly  power.  “The  Ego’s  desire  of 
appropriation  is  boundless,”  says  Nietzsche;  and  it 
is  Nietzsche  who  develops  to  the  extreme  this  ideal, 
in  his  conception  of  the  man  of  the  future  as  “the 
great  blond  beast”  ravaging  the  world  of  benefits 
according  to  the  measure  of  his  strength.  In  place 
of  the  sensual  gratification  of  the  Cyrenaic,  and  the 
sensuous  exclusiveness  of  the  Esthete,  the  Nietz- 
schean  ideal  lauds  mere  action,  mere  strenuosity. 
To  society  it  is  more  perilous  than  either  of  the 
others,  for  while  they  are  passively  anti-social, 
Nietzscheanism  is  boisterously  and  meaninglessly 
destructive. 

Thus,  in  every  line  of  development,  paganism 
comes  into  conflict  with  all  that  we  customarily 
call  morality.  It  is  a  philosophy  of  self-gratification, 
which  the  individual  may  make  reasonable  to  him¬ 
self,  but  which  society  cannot  accept  and  still  remain 
society.  The  anti-moral  of  the  pagan  ideal  is  com¬ 
patible  only  with  social  anarchy. 

But  there  is  another  type  of  individualistic  theory, 
the  Christian  doctrine  that  the  true  object  of  life  is 
the  salvation  of  the  individual  soul.  We  found  this 
ideal,  symbolized  in  the  errant  adventure  of  the  Holy 
Grail,  already  in  conflict  with  Christian  democracy; 
and  the  subjective  turn  of  modern  thought  has  been 
served  to  give  it  a  new  and  intenser  impetus.  The 
main  hypotheses  of  the  conception  are:  (1)  That 
the  life  we  live  is  not  good  in  itself,  that  its  sole 
purpose  is  to  prepare  us  for  the  vastly  more  sig¬ 
nificant  life  to  come;  and  (2)  that  it  is  each  man’s 


Nietzsche 


Paganism 

anti-social 


Christian 
philosophy 
of  life 


28 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Christian, 
Pythagorean 
and  Hindu 


Propitiation 


business,  first  of  all,  to  see  to  the  saving  of  his  own 
soul.  That  the  salvation  offered  by  Christianity  is 
to  be  attained  through  self-sacrifice,  is  due  rather 
to  the  fact  of  its  Founder’s  character  than  to  the 
logic  of  its  philosophic  foundation. 

The  Christian  view  has  important  points  of  resem¬ 
blance  with  the  world-ethics  of  the  ancient  Pythago¬ 
reans  and  of  the  Hindus.  In  common  with  these, 
the  Christian  attitude  toward  life  is  pessimistic:  Evil 
predominates  over  good;  the  corporeal  world  is  a 
prison-house  of  the  soul;  our  present  life  is  a  mere 
preparation  for  the  future,  and  the  evil  of  our 
present  life  is  expiation  for  the  sin  of  the  past 
(though  here,  in  a  minor  detail,  the  Christian  parts 
ways  with  Hindu  and  Pythagorean,  the  ‘^original 
sin”  of  the  first  parents  replacing  with  him  their  doc¬ 
trine  of  guilt  inherited  from  sin  in  previous  incar¬ 
nations). 

It  is  obvious  that  such  a  philosophy  of  life  is 
intensely  individualistic,  and  also  that  it  must  lead 
to  an  ideal  of  conduct  precisely  opposite  to  the 
ideals  springing  from  paganism.  We  can  trace  this 
ideal  in  three  distinct  phases. 

First  (where  Christianity  is  again  at  one  with 
Pythagoreanism  and  Hinduism),  we  have  the  ideal 
of  the  ascetic  life — the  life  which  endeavors  in  every 
possible  way  to  escape  the  normal  life  of  the  natural 
man.  Virtue  consists  in  denial  of  appetite,  in  phy¬ 
sical  torture,  in  the  cultivation  of  physical  deformity, 
in  race  suicide — in  every  possible  means  of  defeating 
the  malevolence  of  the  creative  powers.  The  theory 
is  merely  an  extreme  exaggeration  of  that  primitive 
frame  of  mind  which  induces,  for  example,  the 
Arawak  to  inflame  his  eyes  with  red  pepper  that  he 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


29 


may  appease  the  demon  of  the  rapid  he  is  about  to 
shoot — escape  from  the  great  evil  of  death  being 
bought  by  display  of  the  lesser  evil  of  pain  self- 
administered.  Or,  to  cite  an  interpretation,  it  is  the 
mood  in  which  Browning’s  Caliban  atones  the  pre¬ 
sumptuous  pride  of  his  soliloquy  upon  Setebos : 

What,  what?  A  curtain  o’er  the  world  at  once! 

Crickets  stop  hissing;  not  a  bird!  Or,  yes, — 

There  scuds  His  raven  that  hath  told  Him  all ! 

It  was  fool’s  play,  this  prattling!  Ha!  the  wind 
Shoulders  the  pillared  dust,  death’s  house  o’  the  moor. 

And  fast  invading  fires  begin !  White  blaze ! 

A  tree’s  head  snaps — and  there,  there,  there,  there,  there. 
His  thunder  follows !  Fool  to  gibe  at  Him ! 

Lo !  ’Lieth  flat  and  loveth  Setebos ! 

’Maketh  his  teeth  meet  through  his  upper  lip. 

Will  let  those  quails  fly,  will  not  eat,  this  month. 

One  little  mess  of  whelks,  so  he  may  ’scape ! 

A  second  type  of  life- value  (characteristic  of 
Christian  influence,  though  by  no  means  exclu¬ 
sively  Christian)  of  which,  again,  the  aim  is  escape 
from  normal  activities,  is  the  mystical  conception. 
Mystic  trance  or  mystic  consciousness  is  regarded  as 
the  supreme  good,  and  usually  as  a  foretaste  of  the 
bliss  of  the  life  to  come.  Man’s  voyage  through  the 
carnal  seas  of  terrene  experience  is  worth  while 
chiefly  for  the  occasions  it  offers  for  the  manifesta¬ 
tion  or  indulgence  of  the  mystic  state.  The  striking 
traits  of  this  consciousness  are: — (1)  Some  degree 
of  anaesthesia,  the  world  of  sense  being  wholly  or 
partially  blotted  out,  which  perhaps  partly  explains 
(2)  the  sense  of  total  self-surrender;  (3)  an  inner 
perception  of  the  harmony  of  the  cosmos,  a  feeling 
of  union  with  God;  and  (4)  an  accompanying  emo¬ 
tion  of  ineffable  bliss.  'Tn  the  orison  of  union,” 
says  Saint  Teresa,  “the  soul  is  fully  awake  as  regards 


Browning’s 

Caliban 


The  Mystic’ 
escape 


and  the 
Saint’s 


30 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Ghost- 

Dance 

Religion 


God :  but  wholly  asleep  as  regards  things  of  this 
world  and  in  respect  of  herself.”  And  another  saint, 
writing  of  the  mystic  revelation,  says :  ‘‘A  single  one 
of  these  intoxicating  consolations  may  reward  the 
soul  for  all  the  labours  undergone  in  life.” 

It  is  obvious  that  if  the  lives  of  men  generally 
were  ordered  with  respect  to  the  attainment  (even 
at  rare  periods)  of  this  state  of  bliss,  we  should 
speedily  develop  into  antisocial  decay,  at  best  into  . 
monasticism.  And  it  is  therefore  not  a  little  inter¬ 
esting  to  find  at  the  present  day  perhaps  the  purest 
development  of  the  mystic  life  among  the  American 
Indians,  a  race  whose  hopes  for  social  realization  in 
this  world  have  long  since  vanished.  The  Ghost- 
Dance  religion  is  the  supreme  expression  of  this 
ideal,  an  effort  to  realize  in  trance  and  dream  an 

f 

ideal  of  national  life  which  the  hard  circumstances 
of  their  contact  with  the  whites  have  denied  to  the 
Indian  in  reality.  How  truly  the  Indian  type  of 
experience  corresponds  to  that  of  the  saints  of  the 
Church  may  be  shown  from  the  words  of  a  poor 
dreamer  of  the  Squaxin  tribe,  on  Puget  Sound,  a 
man  half-Christianized  but  wholly  ignorant : 

At  night  my  breath  was  out,  and  I  died.  All  at  once  I  saw 
a  shining  light — great  light — trying  my  soul.  I  looked  and 
saw  my  body  had  no  soul — looked  at  my  own  body — it  was 
dead.  My  soul  left  body  and  went  up  to  judgment-place  of 

God .  I  have  seen  a  great  light  in  my  soul  from  that 

good  land;  I  have  understand  all  Christ  wants  us  to  do. 

And,  one  should  add,  this  dreamer  reformed  the 
habits  of  his  tribe,  making  them  temperate  and  in¬ 
dustrious  men. 

But  there  is  yet  another  outcome  of  the  Christian 
theory,  for  thoughtful  men  the  most  important  of 
all.  There  is  not  one  of  us,  I  believe,  who,  what- 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


31 


ever  his  theoretical  conviction,  could  find  himself 
practically  capable  of  a  whole-souled  reversion  to 
paganism.  In  our  moral  nature  there  is  an  element 
of  restraint,  of  Puritanism,  of  which  we  can  never 
rid  ourselves.  Conscience,  the  sense  of  duty,  the 
sense  of  sin — these  are  elements  which  Christianity 
has  intensified  in  the  human  mind  in  manifold  ways. 
And  no  matter  what  our  philosophy  may  be,  however 
materialistic  it  may  become,  we  cannot  escape  this 
Christian  consciousness  which  marks  us  off  from 
the  non-Christian  races  of  men.  For  it  is,  let  us 
note,  an  individual  conscience,  an  individual  sense  of 
duty,  individual  sense  of  sin.  Social  duty,  noblesse 
oblige,  is  certainly  as  strongly  developed  among  the 
Japanese,  for  example,  as  with  us;  but  that  inner 
control  which  bites  the  spirit  of  a  man  in  his  solitude, 
giving  him  for  his  sins  a  sense  of  transgression 
against  God  which  makes  hell  intelligible — that  is 
largely  the  creation  of  Christianity.  It  has  become 
in  us  a  kind  of  moral  instinct,  and  no  matter  how  we 
rationalize  our  ideas  of  self-development,  they  al¬ 
ways  contain  a  full  measure  of  the  Christian  demand 
for  the  soul’s  salvation. 

Hedonism,  in  other  words,  is  bastard  to  the 
Christianized  mind.  If  happiness  be  made  the  ideal 
of  the  human  race,  it  must  first  make  terms  with  our 
Christian  impulse  to  self-denial, — at  least,  denial  of 
the  carnal  self  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual, — and 
with  our  Christian  zeal  for  proselytizing.  Buddhism 
and  Mohammedanism,  like  Christianity,  are  mis¬ 
sionary  religions.  But  Buddhism  rests  its  plea  upon 
the  denial  of  individualism;  and  the  Moslem  ideal 
is  frankly  political;  it  is  only  Christianity  that  com¬ 
bines  individualism  and  democracy, — self-realization 


Conscience 


The  sense 
of  sin 


Self- 

realization 
in  self- 
sacrifice 


Egoism 
leads  to 
race  suicide 


32  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

and  self-sacrifice, — a  conception  clearly  impossible 
on  purely  hedonistic  grounds.  And  this  I  believe 
to  be  the  reason  why  the  hedonistic  theory  in  modern 
times  has  seemed  rational  to  the  European  mind 
only  as  generalized  into  the  ‘‘greatest  good  of  the 
greatest  number,” — though  this,  too,  must  mean  the 
eventual  socialization  of  the  Christian  conception 
and  the  final  abandonment  of  individualism  as  an 
ethical  ideal. 

But  modern  thought  has  given  another,  a  conclu¬ 
sive  reason  why  individualism  (at  least  when  under¬ 
stood  as  unadulterated  egoism)  can  never  be  a 
paramount  life-ideal.  The  reason  is  single  and  con¬ 
clusive.  Pure  egoism  means  race  suicide.  We  can¬ 
not  say  to  any  given  man  that  he  shall  not  make 
individual  pleasure  the  guide  of  his  conduct;  but 
we  can  say,  and  say  authoritatively,  that  no  race  of 
men  can  do  this  and  survive  upon  the  face  of  the 
earth. 

Nature  herself,  in  making  man  a  gregarious  ani¬ 
mal,  has  determined  him  to  social  ideals;  and  if  the 
history  of  nations  tells  us  anything,  it  is  that  races 
or  peoples  who  are  temperamentally  careless  of  the 
future  are  the  decaying  and  vanishing  races  and  peo¬ 
ples.  The  fungus  populations  of  gold-hunters’  camps 
are  the  veriest  ephemera  compared  with  the  towns 
of  the  corn-raisers  who  follow  them.  Spain  ravished 
the  gold  of  the  New  World;  poverty  and  decay  are 
the  rewards  of  her  lack  of  foresight.  And  we  our¬ 
selves — bent  on  material  splendour,  inebriated  by  the 
license  of  easy  gain — are  we  not  already  seriously 
asking  if  we  have  not  sold  the  birthright  of  our  race, 
mortgaged  its  promise  of  a  great  part  in  human 
affairs,  by  the  selfishness  and  senselessness  of  our 
self-indulgence? 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


33 


We  may  not  deny  to  the  individual  his  right  to  a 
life  of  self-gratification.  But  the  race  or  a  nation  is 
no  mere  aggregate  of  individuals:  it  is  itself  an  Race 
individual  of  a  larger  power,  an  organism;  and  to 
every  race  and  nation  we  may  and  must  say  that  the  social  ideal 
duration  and  efficiency  of  its  life  must  be  in  propor¬ 
tion  to  its  realization  of  a  social  ideal. 

V 

In  what  precedes  I  have  briefly  sketched  the  sev¬ 
eral  types  of  communal  and  individual  life-concep¬ 
tions.  These  conceptions  have  been  developed  in 
historic  contexts  which,  in  large  part,  explain  them. 

But  no  one  of  them  has  been  established  as  a  uni¬ 
versal  model ;  for  history  knows  no  universals. 

Today  the  problem  of  conduct  is  as  fresh  and  un-  The  modern 
solved  as  ever  it  has  been  in  the  past,  and  as  insis- 
tent,  and  as  challenging.  History  has  given  it  no 
enduring  answer ;  none  the  less,  history  has  given  a 
great  vantage  in  setting  forth  with  some  distinction 
the  guiding  types,  in  portraying  for  the  modern 
man  the  kinds  of  plots  in  which  he  may  imagina¬ 
tively  dramatize  his  own  future. 

What,  then,  is  to  be  the  attitude  of  this  modern 
man,  the  man  of  education,  able  to  estimate  all  the 
factors  involved,  all  the  consequences  of  his  action, 
toward  his  personal  plan  of  conduct  ?  How  is  he  to 
order  his  life  without  offense  to  reason  or  to  the 
sense  of  duty?  How  is  he  to  choose  between  the  two 
ideals  which  he  must  take  into  account :  the  egoistic 
ideal — what  his  life  shall  mean  to  himself ;  the  al¬ 
truistic  or  communistic  ideal — what  his  life  shall 
mean  to  his  kind? 

‘Tt  is,”  says  Rousseau,  *‘a  grand  and  beautiful 


34 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Rousseau 


Virgil 


The 

Covenant 

with 

Abram 


spectacle  to  see  man  issue  as  it  were  from  naught  by 
his  proper  efforts,  dissipate  by  the  light  of  his  reason 
the  shadows  in  which  nature  has  enveloped  him,  ele¬ 
vate  himself  above  himself,  mount  in  the  ardour  of 
his  spirit  even  to  celestial  regions,  traverse  with  a 
giant’s  pace,  like  unto  the  sun,  the  vast  expanse  of 
the  universe,  and  finally,  what  is  yet  greater  and 
more  difficult,  enter  within  himself  in  order  there  to 
study  Man,  to  know  his  nature,  his  duties,  and  his 
end.” 

Rousseau  here  summarizes  a  point  of  view  which 
I  take  to  be  characteristic  of  the  scientific  thought  of 
our  present  generation.  To  the  most  advanced  minds 
among  the  Romans,  as  among  the  Hebrews,  the 
imagination  could  figure  no  nobler  destiny  than  the 
continuous  rule  and  continuous  aggrandisement  of 
their  race : 

Hie  domus  ^neae  cunctis  dominabitur  oris, 
et  nati  natorum  et  qui  nascentur  ab  illis. 

The  Virgilian  passage  irresistibly  recalls  the  cov¬ 
enant  with  the  father  of  Israel : 

Neither  shall  thy  name  be  called  Abram,  but  thy  name  shall 
be  Abraham;  for  a  father  of  many  nations  have  I  made  thee. 

And  I  will  make  thee  exceeding  fruitful,  and  I  will  make 
nations  of  thee,  and  kings  shall  come  out  of  thee. 

And  I  will  give  unto  thee,  and  to  thy  seed  after  thee,  the  land 
wherein  thou  art  a  stranger,  all  the  land  of  Canaan,  for  an 
everlasting  possession. 

“An  everlasting  possession!”  The  ancient  geocen¬ 
tric  view  of  the  universe  could  allow  such  a  concep¬ 
tion  :  an  unending  race  dwelling  in  an  everlastingly 
fruitful  land.  But  the  years  have  brought  us  wis¬ 
dom,  and  such  ideas  are  now  unthinkable.  Let  us 
see  what  the  modern  conception  substitutes. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


35 


First,  the  idea  of  Mankind,  the  Human  Race,  re¬ 
places  that  of  a  particular  race  or  people.  Patriotism 
gives  place  to  humanitarianism ;  the  destinies  of 
particular  nations  are  of  paltry  distinction  as  com¬ 
pared  with  the  destiny  of  the  whole  race. 

Second,  in  the  hundred  and  fifty  years  since  Rous¬ 
seau  wrote,  the  scope  of  even  his  humanitarian 
thought  has  been  far  transcended.  For  the  life  of 
the  race  is  no  final  measure  of  thought,  and  now, 
behind  it,  before  and  after,  we  see  the  life  of  the 
Cosmos.  Man’s  destiny  is  set  against  world-destiny, 
and  is  become  dwarfed  in  comparison. 

Ethical  zeal,  moral  enthusiasm,  is  possible  to  the 
humanitarian  view.  A  man  may  live  for  his  race,  as 
for  his  nation,  and  still  find  inspiration  in  his  life. 
And  this  ideal  of  devotion  to  race  is,  in  fact,  urged 
by  writers  on  morals  as  a  motive  and  reward  of 
sufficient  force  to  give  energy  even  to  a  sceptical 
age,  and  social  efficiency  to  men  who  have  no 
thought  of  reward  in  a  life  to  come. 

But  it  is  a  real  question  whether  this  moral  zeal 
can  persist  when  men  have  generally  attained  the 
cosmic  view  of  life,  at  least  in  the  materialistic 
form.  The  mental  attitude  which  this  view  induces 
is  at  best  one  of  contemplation,  not  one  of  activity. 
Stoic  endurance,  never  ethical  enthusiasm,  is  the 
highest  mood  it  permits. 

I  am  aware  that  this  is  not  universally  admitted. 
There  are  many  who  claim  to  find  the  spectacle  of 
the  Cosmic  Machine  in  itself  an  inspiration  giving 
worth  to  men’s  lives.  But  I  thoroughly  believe  that 
where  this  view  is  not  bombast  it  is  sorry  self-decep¬ 
tion.  Let  me  quote  from  a  recent  expositor  of  the 
materialistic  world-view: 


The  modern 
measure 


Devotion 
to  race 


The  Cosmic 
Machine 


36 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


It  seems  to  me  that  the  fact  of  the  Conservation  of  Matter, 
teaching  us  that  there  shall  never  be  one  lost  atom,  nor  ever 
has  been — considered  with  the  nebular  theory,  which  teaches 
us  afresh  and  with  the  authoritative  voice  of  mathematical 
science,  the  lesson  of  Heraclitus  and  Herbert  Spencer,  that  the 
Cosmos  pursues  an  eternal  succession  of  cyclical  changes — 
reveals  to  the  imagination  a  vista  of  sheer  sublimity.  My  pen 
can  but  adumbrate  it,  yet  surely  the  reader,  accepting  the  simple 
statement  of  matter  and  energy  eternally  pursuing  this  cyclic 
course,  and  ever  and  again  giving  rise  to  sentient  and  reason¬ 
ing  creatures  such  as  himself,  may  agree  with  me  that  here  is 
an  Epic  indeed. 


Mechanism 

implies 

Chaos 


Now  it  may  be  that  the  doctrine  of  blind  cycles 
is  true,  that  the  last  word  of  Science  is  indeed 
uttered,  and  that  a  constricted  imagination  is,  in 
sooth,  the  proper  gauge  of  reality.  It  may  be  that 
the  monstrosity  is  real;  but,  if  it  be  so,  let  us  at 
least  be  spared  the  Epic,  the  emotion!  To  venerate 
inanity  because  it  is  indestructible,  a  machine  be¬ 
cause  it  is  huge,  a  motion  because  it  is  perpetual,  to 
abase  oneself  before  Chaos  because  of  its  senseless 
repetitions — this  is  an  incubus  too  galling!  The 
Hindu  with  his  similar  (or  identical?)  doctrine  of 
the  eternal  inbreathings  and  outbreathings  of  the 
spirit  of  Brahm,  the  everlasting  succession  of  mean¬ 
ingless  creation  and  meaningless  destruction,  is  at  all 
events  consistently  and  patiently  pessimistic;  com¬ 
prehending  the  naked  destitution  of  his  philosophy, 
he  comports  himself  within  its  proprieties.  Have  we 
no  right  to  expect  equal  grace  of  Science  ?  There  is 
an  abnegation  in  the  acceptance  of  brute  truth  as 
truly  brutal  which,  if  it  cannot  be  inspiring,  may  yet 
be  dignified.  In  the  still  reception  of  the  deadly 
sentence  there  is  manliness;  but  glorification  of 
one’s  gallows — this  smacks  of  pitiable  braggadocio. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


37 


Cruel  where  cruelty  is  demanded,  Shakespeare  did 
the  thing  more  humanly : 

Ay,  but  to  die  and  go  we  know  not  where; 

To  He  in  cold  obstruction,  and  to  rot; 

This  sensible  warm  motion  to  become 
A  kneaded  clod. 


Of  course,  it  is  not  to  be  dogmatized  that  the 
Cosmist’s  view  may  not,  in  some  sense,  be  true  to  the 
fact.  Human  knowledge  is  too  limited  even  to  pro¬ 
nounce  against  its  own  limitation.  All  the  l^oring 
ages  of  mankind  may  have  been  fooled  in  their  ideal 
of  overruling  powers  and  destinies.  But  conceding 
this.  Nature  has  at  least  made  us  what  we  are.  Na¬ 
ture  has  at  least  compelled  us  to  such  form  that 
human  values  are  the  only  ones  for  us;  not  even 
the  Cosmist  escapes  this  fate.  Which  so,  if  we  ac¬ 
cept  the  Cosmism,  let  us,  true  to  ourselves,  accept 
it  for  what  to  our  view  it  must  be — a  hideous  huge 
anarchy,  only  travestied  with  the  name  of  law. 

Certainly,  the  common  man  will  so  view  it.  Hu¬ 
man  to  the  core,  for  him  perception  that  the  big  dead 
universe  is  but  meant  to  thwart  him,  that  he  exists 
but  as  its  idle  sport,  will  only  serve  to  set  him  in  his 
resolve  of  snatching  from  the  arch-enemy  what 
good  this  world  can  offer.  Hard-headed,  he  will 
build,  as  materialism  ever  compels  men  to  build,  not 
for  character  which  may  be  eternal,  but  for  the  hot 
success  of  the  hour,  the  big  plunder  of  the  moment : 


Human 
values  are 
Nature’s 
values 


man’s  vie-,, 
The  commoii 


The  Bird  of  Time  has  but  a  little  way 
To  flutter — and  the  Bird  is  on  the  Wing. 


Least  of  all  will  he  be  affected  by  any  “sheer  sub¬ 
limity”  in  the  spectacle  of  disorder,  or  any  poetry  in 
the  joyless  “Epic”  of  Chaos.  There  is  poetry  in  the 


38 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Contempla¬ 
tion  or 
action 


The  task 
of  mankind 


melody  of  a  bird’s  call,  in  the  lithe  grace  of  children 
at  play,  in  the  winsomeness  of  maids’  faces, — there 
is  music  and  loveliness  in  these,  ephemera  though 
they  be.  But  in  an  indestructible  horde  of  atoms 
gyrating  through  a  perpetuity  of  senseless  motions 
— in  this  there  is  only  monstrosity. 

VI 

But  Esthetics  is  not  Ethics.  The  spectacular 
quality  of  the  world,  whether  it  be  the  pageant  of 
human  history  which  appealed  to  Rousseau’s  imagi¬ 
nation  or  the  “Epic”  of  the  Cosmos,  has,  when  all 
is  said,  only  an  aesthetic  appeal.  It  leaves  no  room 
for  the  exercise  of  other  than  a  contemplative  frame 
of  mind;  and,  granted  that  such  a  mental  mood  may 
be  the  summum  bonum  of  the  Christian  mystic,  of 
the  Hindu  sage,  or  even  of  the  modern  man  of 
science  in  his  most  specialized  and  least  human  de¬ 
velopment,  it  is  not  passing  bounds  to  maintain  that 
the  rule  of  survival  negates  any  universal  recogni¬ 
tion  of  such  good  as  supreme.  The  race  or  type  of 
man  that  is  to  do  the  world’s  work  must  be  one  that 
finds  in  efficient  action  the  proper  realization  of  life’s 
worth. 

This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  a  commonplace  of  biologic 
fact.  The  problem  before  mankind  as  a  whole  is  to 
make  this  earth  as  habitable  as  possible,  and  for 
as  long  a  period  as  possible.  The  life-instinct  itself 
demands  this;  and  consequently  that  race  which 
has  this  instinct  in  the  keenest  degree,  coupled  with 
ability  to  adapt  environment  to  the  man  and  the  man 
to  environment,  is  bound  to  be  the  race  of  the  Over¬ 
man.  If  the  recent  observations  of  Mars  have  not 
yet  demonstrated  a  Martian  population,  they  have 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


39 


done  something  of  far  more  practical  significance: 
they  have  brought  home  to  us  the  conception  of  a 
mortal  race  harnessing  and  economizing  all  the  re¬ 
sources  of  its  natural  habitat,  maintaining  its  integ¬ 
rity  against  desperate  odds,  and  struggling  to  the 
last  ditch  (I  will  admit  the  double  entente)  to  utilize 
the  chances  of  life  wrung  from  a  parsimonious  na¬ 
ture. 

It  is  obvious  that  such  a  struggle — infinitely 
dwarfing  the  wars  of  nations  and  races — implies  a 
degree  of  social  solidarity  not  yet  foreshadowed, 
even  dimly,  in  any  human  society;  but  it  is  equally 
obvious  that  it  is  a  degree  of  solidarity  to  which  the 
Man  of  the  Future  must  and  will  attain.  Whether 
that  future  man  is  to  spring  from  the  black  race, 
the  white  race,  or  the  brown  race,  or  an  amalgama¬ 
tion  of  races,  is  the  problem  confronting  us  of  today; 
and  I  believe  that  it  is  virtually  a  question  of  life- 
ideals.  The  type  of  man,  the  race  of  men,  that  is 
willing  to  sacrifice  self  for  others,  the  present  for  the 
future,  is  the  type  and  race  spiritually  best  fitted  for 
this  high  place  in  human  destiny.  But  for  such  an 
equipment  and  such  a  role  it  is  also  necessary  that 
each  man’s  life  should  offer  in  itself  some  source  of 
inspiration  capable  of  stirring  him  to  great  action, 
some  ideal  of  human  worth  and  dignity  in  the  order 
of  Nature.  The  social  ideal  must  be  supplemented 
by  an  individual  reward,  for,  after  all,  the  work  of 
society  is  achieved  by  the  aggregate  of  individual 
efforts. 

For  the  exemplification  of  this  balance  of  social 
and  individual  ideals  let  us  turn  to  ancient  life.  “A 
city  like  an  individual,”  says  Aristotle,  “has  a  work 
to  do.”  And  again:  “The  good  of  the  individual 


The  _ 
Martians 


The  coming 
Race 


Balance  of 
social  and 
individual 
factors 


40 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  happiest 
of  men 


Greek  ideal 
of  nobility 


is  identical  with  the  good  of  the  state.”  Herodotus 
relates  how,  when  Croesus  asked  Solon  who  was 
the  happiest  of  men,  the  sage  replied:  “Tellus,  the 
Athenian;  for  in  the  first  place  he  lived  in  a  well- 
governed  commonwealth ;  had  sons  who  were  virtu¬ 
ous  and  good,  and  he  saw  children  born  to  them  all 
and  all  surviving;  in  the  next  place,  when  he  had 
lived  as  happily  as  the  conditions  of  human  affairs 
will  permit,  he  ended  his  life  in  a  most  glorious 
manner;  for  coming  to  the  assistance  of  the  Athen¬ 
ians  in  a  battle  with  their  neighbors  of  Eleusis,  he 
put  the  enemy  to  flight  and  died  nobly.”  In  another 
connection  Herodotus  tells  of  a  speech  made  by 
Themistocles  to  the  assembled  Greeks,  about  to  enter 
into  action  at  Salamis.  The  gist  of  it  was,  he  says, 
that  in  all  that  pertains  to  human  nature  and  circum¬ 
stance  there  is  a  nobler  and  a  baser  side,  and  it  was 
for  them  to  choose  the  nobler. 

What  that  nobler  part  is  appears  in  various  forms 
throughout  Greek  history  ^ :  an  ideal  of  self-respect, 
issuing  in  Temperance;  an  ideal  of  devotion  under 
the  domination  of  reason, — represented  in  Homeric 
times  by  that  aiSws  or  chivalric  shame  which  forbade 
injury  to  the  weak  and  helpless,  even  on  the  part  of 
the  marauder;  and  in  the  settled  life  of  the  age  of 
cities  by  aper^,  virtue,  which  found  the  fullest  reali¬ 
zation  of  human  personality  in  a  wholly  self-con¬ 
scious  and  self-respecting  devotion  to  the  body  po¬ 
litic,  a  virtue  which  might  induce  a  man  to  give  up 
his  life  to  the  State  even  against  that  other  reason  in 
which  he  maintained  his  own  right  as  an  individual. 
^‘Their  bodies,”  says  Thucydides  of  the  Athenians, 

^Compare  Gilbert  Murray,  The  Rise  of  the  Greek  Epic,  II,  III,  to 
which  I  am  indebted  for  much  in  this  connection. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


41 


‘'they  devote  to  their  country  as  though  they  be¬ 
longed  to  other  men;  their  true  self  is  their  mind, 
which  is  most  truly  their  own  when  employed  in 
her  service.” 

Such  a  conception  of  life  combines  and  balances 
the  individual  and  communal  elements ;  or,  to  put  it 
in  psychological  terms,  gives  sufficient  share  alike  to 
the  mind’s  need  for  inspiration  and  its  need  of  ac¬ 
tion.  That  this  conception  could  and  did  develop 
among  the  Greeks,  was  undoubtedly  due  to  the  na¬ 
ture  of  their  political  and  philosophical  ideas.  To 
Greek  thought  the  State  was  no  mere  abstraction  of 
powers  and  functions,  as  with  us ;  rather  it  was  the 
public  household;  it  was  a  living  body,  a  vital  and 
energized  expression  of  human  mutuality.  Each 
man  has,  as  a  part  of  his  individual  self,  a  social 
self;  each  human  being  is  not  only  an  ego,  but  a 
part  of  that  solidarity  of  wills  and  needs  which  we 
call  Mankind.  Indeed,  no  man  can  expunge  this  so¬ 
cial  part  of  his  nature  and  remain  a  man ;  it  is  only 
the  populousness  of  his  imagination  that  saves  for 
Robinson  Crusoe  his  sanity;  man  is  man  only  in  so 
far  as  he  is  a  moral  being.  The  Greeks  realized  this 
not  only  in  the  unconscious  laws  of  conduct  which 
make  human  society  anywhere  possible,  but  they 
realized  it  consciously  in  their  civic  life,  which  was 
for  each  man  an  organic  part  of  the  living  body 
politic. 

Moreover,  being  thorough  anthropomorphists, 
they  realized  it  also  in  their  philosophies.  To  the 
Greek  mind  the  World  is  only  a  more  inclusive 
Household,  a  more  inclusive  State.  With  the  Py¬ 
thagoreans  the  central  fire  of  the  Cosmos  is  Hestia, 
the  central  Hearth,  playing  the  same  role  in  the 


Greek 

political 

philosophy 


Man  is  man 
when  moral 


42 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Cosmos 
of  the 
Pythago¬ 
reans 


A  living 
World 


general  harmony  as  the  householder’s  hearth  in  the 
building  of  the  home ;  but  Hestia  is  not  only  a  cosmic 
hearth,  it  is  also  the  throne  of  Zeus,  whence  pro¬ 
ceeds  order.  Nearly  every  Greek  philosopher  con¬ 
ceived  the  World  as  a  living  and  developing  body, 
comprising  within  itself  a  multitude  of  lesser  living 
bodies  which  were  no  less  individual  and  free  be¬ 
cause  the  essence  of  their  freedom  lay  in  ordering 
their  tasks  and  wills  to  the  Supreme  Will  of  the 
Whole. 

In  other  words,  Greek  thought  was  evolutional, 
resting  upon  that  very  hypothesis  of  organic  devel¬ 
opment  which  is  today  transforming  modern 
thought.  In  our  political  life,  the  strait-jacket  of 
Militarism,  man’s  mastery  of  his  fellow  man,  has 
given  way  to  that  struggle  for  the  mastery  of  Na¬ 
ture  which  we  call  Industrialism.  In  thought  we 
may  compare  this  process  to  the  sloughing-off  of  the 
strait- jacketing  mythic  allegory  in  favor  of  the  more 
efficient  conception  of  World-Mechanism.  But  we 
are  not  stopping  with  Mechanism;  under  the  in¬ 
fluence  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  we  are  acquiring 
once  again  the  conception  of  the  world  as  living — 
the  world  as  a  vital  organism.  And  has  this  view  not 
already  begun  to  remould  our  political  ideals,  so 
that,  again  with  the  Greeks,  we  are  approaching  the 
ideal  of  a  living  social  organism  under  the  sway  of 
human  reason? 

The  ideals  of  Socialism,  where  these  ideals  are  at 
all  realized,  point  in  this  direction :  the  man’s  body 
belongs  to  the  State,  but  his  mind  is  his  true  self. 
“Apart  from  religion,”  said  Locke,  “the  end  of  man 
is  to  secure  a  plenty  of  the  good  things  of  this  world, 
with  life,  health,  and  peace  to  enjoy  them.”  Such  a 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


43 


sentiment  is  hopelessly  antiquated:  not  that  it  has 
no  followers  today,  but  that  it  is  certain  to  have 
none  in  the  morrow  of  the  race.  Unquestionably  we 
have  mainly  outgrown  the  ascetic  contempt  for  the 
“good  things  of  this  world,”  but  as  unquestionably 
we  are  finding,  and  must  find  if  we  are  to  survive, 
the  supreme  good  in  an  ideal  of  human  character 
which  it  is  the  destiny  of  the  race  to  evolve.  We 
know  well  that,  whether  it  be  a  million  or  a  hundred 
million  years  hence,  the  time  is  coming  when  our 
kind  will  have  disappeared  from  the  earth.  All  the 
material  works  of  men’s  hands  will  have  come  to 
naught,  as  if  they  had  never  been;  but  Man,  the 
high  ideal  of  the  worthy  human  experience  and  the 
noble  human  life,  Man’s  character  at  its  noblest — 
shall  not  this  have  been  added  as  a  definite  asset  and 
achievement  of  the  Cosmos?  Having  faith  in  the 
truth  of  Nature,  we  cannot  doubt  it. 

VII 

Let  us  clearly  understand  ourselves.  The  man  of 
the  future  is  to  be  one  willing  to  devote  himself  to 
the  development  of  an  efficient  physical  life  on  this 
Earth.  He  is  to  do  this,  aware  that  in  the  course 
of  nature  all  his  material  works,  all  his  physical 
achievements,  must  come  to  naught.  A  dead  and 
ruined  planet  is  the  ultimate  goal  of  his  physical 
efforts. 

Now  if  such  end  and  such  result  were  to  be  his 
sole  inspiration,  I  believe  and  affirm  that  his  role 
would  be  an  impossible  one.  Only  two  courses 
would  then  be  open  which  human  nature,  being  what 
it  is,  could  possibly  follow.  First,  that  individualis¬ 
tic  Hedonism  which  results  in  anarchy  and  decay: 


Character 
the  end  of 
human 
evolution 


The  dead 
Planet 


44 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Hedonism 

and 

Pessimism 


The  ideal 
man 


“Let  US  eat  and  drink,  for  tomorrow  we  die.”  Sec¬ 
ond,  the  race  suicide  which  pessimistic  philosophy, 
whether  German  or  Hindu,  demands  as  the  due  logic 
of  intelligence  :  when  man  realizes  the  horror  of  his 
situation,  when  instinct  falls  at  last  under  the  domi¬ 
nation  of  intelligence,  then  life  destroys  itself,  as  the 
sole  revenge  upon  the  brutishness  of  creative  forces. 
This  is  Schopenhauer’s  Ansicht;  and  that  it  is  no 
mere  theory,  but  is  based  upon  actual  facts  of  human 
psychology,  finds  daily  confirmation  in  this  material¬ 
istic  and  hence  pessimistic  age.  “What’s  the  use?” 
is  the  laconic  message  left  by  a  suicide  the  other  day 
— a  man  of  scientific  training,  a  physician,  one  who 
had  every  right  to  believe  his  life-work  valuable  if 
any  life-work  is  of  value. 

Now  what  is  to  save  the  man  and  the  race  of  the 
future  from  this  pessimism  and  its  logical  outcome? 
There  is  but  one  thing.  The  physical  life,  the 
life  of  the  great  Commune  of  Man  here  on  earth, 
must  be  valued  not  for  its  own  sake  but  for  the  sake 
of  the  ideal  human  character  which  such  a  life  is  to 
develop.  The  ideal  man  and  his  partial  incarnation 
in  individual  men — this  must  be  the  ground  of  in¬ 
spiration. 

And  what  does  this  life  and  character  imply? 
Surely  it  means  more  than  a  life  to  be  relentlessly 
snuffed  out  by  the  Cosmos  which  has  created  it! 
It  has  ever  been  the  cue  of  those  who  see  in  the 
Cosmos  a  colossal  machine  grinding  out  slow  fatali¬ 
ties,  to  summon  man  to  the  realization  of  his  own 
weak,  paltry,  and  precarious  being:  he  is  to  con¬ 
sider  himself  the  helpless  factotum  of  vain  and 
foolish  destinies,  in  whose  whim  he  must  humbly 
acquiesce. 


RELIGION  AND  RACE  PROGRESS 


45 


But  such  a  view  of  Nature  is  utterly  incompati¬ 
ble  with  human  perpetuity.  If  the  ideal  life  is  to  be 
but  a  dream,  a  wraith,  a  vain  chimsera  of  reasonless 
Chaos,  it  can  be  only  meaningless  to  men’s  minds;  it 
can  inspire  no  enthusiasm,  no  effort. 

The  man  of  the  future  must  have  faith  in  Nature. 
He  must  believe,  as  the  Greeks  believed,  that  the 
world  is  alive,  or  at  least  that  it  is  inspired  by  rea¬ 
son;  and  he  must  believe  also  that  his  life  and  what 
he  does  with  it  is  important  in  the  plan  and  purpose 
of  this  world-intelligence.  In  other  words,  he  must 
believe  in  and  trust  a  God. 

But  the  individual  factor  is  not  yet  wholly  satis¬ 
fied.  A  God  for  whom  this  earthly  life  is  a  mere 
spectacle  leading  to  naught  beyond,  a  God  whose  in¬ 
terest  in  creation  is  no  better  than  the  appetite  of  a 
Roman  populace  for  gladiatorial  shows — such  a 
God  deserves  neither  the  labor  nor  the  loyalty  of  the 
human  soul.  There  must  be,  in  the  order  of  Nature, 
not  only  an  ethical  salvation  in  this  world,  but  a  con¬ 
summation  of  the  life  here  begun  in  a  world  to 
come,  in  order  to  satisfy  reason.  Wherefore,  the 
man  and  the  race  of  the  future  must  have  faith  in  a 
life  in  a  world  to  come,  belief  in  human  immortality. 

These  two  great  Credos  of  human  history,  com¬ 
mon  to  all  expressions  of  the  religious  instinct — 
belief  in  God  and  belief  in  immortality — are,  I  af¬ 
firm,  bound  to  prevail  on  the  earth.  All  the  teach¬ 
ings  of  history  and  biology,  every  principle  of  evo¬ 
lution,  enforce  this  view.  Races  that  deny  these 
beliefs  must  disappear  from  the  earth,  in  favor  of 
the  better-adapted  members  of  their  kind. 

I  am  not  maintaining  any  a  priori  certitude  that 
there  is  a  God  to  whom  man’s  destiny  is  meaningful. 


Faith  in 
Nature  is 
trust  in  God 


Belief  in 
immortality 


46 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Creed 
of  Life 


nor  that  that  destiny  does  not  cease  with  this  earthly 
life.  But  I  do  affirm  that  Nature  decrees  that  the 
man  who  survives,  the  race  that  persists,  must  be¬ 
lieve  these  things.  They  are  a  part  of  the  equipment 
of  the  Fittest  to  Survive. 

'  Further,  I  think  I  may  safely  add  that  all  nat¬ 
ural  science  and  natural  law,  the  order  and  meaning 
which  man  finds  in  Nature,  all  that  makes  a  Cosmos 
rather  than  a  Chaos  of  the  universe,  is  maniacal 
illusion  unless  Nature  keep  faith  with  the  intelli¬ 
gence  which  she  has  generated. 


III.  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


ovK  eoLKC  8’  ^  cf)vaL<;  eTreicroSLwBr]'?  ovaa  e/c  twv  ^aivojuevwv, 
wcTTrep  ixo)(6r]pa  rpaywSta. 

— Aristotle. 


The  history  of  human  thought  being  taken 
broadly  into  account,  it  is  hardly  to  be  doubted 
that  the  conception  of  evolution  must  be  reckoned  as 
the  supreme  contribution  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen¬ 
tury.  It  is  not  merely  that  evolution  has  been  shown 
to  be  the  significant  fact  in  the  order  of  Nature, 
throwing  the  stress  of  all  interpretation  upon  the 
organic  side,  but  (of  vastly  greater  importance)  as 
a  conception  it  has  come  to  be  the  leading  category 
of  our  everyday  metaphysics.  We  have  grown  into 
the  habit  of  thinking  eyolutionally.  We  require 
more  than  a  reference  to  static  fact  or  to  substance 
and  attribute  to  satisfy  our  intellectual  needs.  For 
full  understandings  we  demand  an  end  and  a  pur¬ 
pose  as  well  as  a  cause  or  source ;  we  demand  a  de¬ 
velopment,  a  life-history.  Indeed,  the  life-history 
has  come  to  be  the  unit  regulating  all  our  estimates 
of  completeness  and  propriety,  be  our  concern  a 
solar  system,  a  physical  organism,  a  political  party, 
or  an  idea. 

Now  evolution,  as  a  category,  is  nothing  short  of 
downright  negation  of  the  rather  smug  idealisms  of 
former  times,  with  their  reposeful  faiths  in  definite 
and  retainable  Utopias.  Evolution  denies  retaina- 
bility.  It  refuses  to  allow  any  rest  whatever,  Eter- 

47 


Evolution 
a  category 
of  modern 
thinking 


48 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Aspiration 
the  form  of 
mental  life 


Mind  and 
Nature 


nal  volancy,  eternal  expectancy,  eternal  promise, — 
in  these  is  its  essence.  So,  in  the  realm  of  ideas, 
where  once  a  stable  and  ponderous  Truth  was  the 
exalted  hoped-for,  now — strange  shifting! — insa¬ 
tiate  Aspiration  is  seen  to  be  inevitable.  Paradoxi¬ 
cally  enough,  it  is  seen,  too,  to  be  the  one  fit  and 
appropriate  form  of  mental  life  and  the  one  possible 
satisfaction  of  mental  need. 

Yet  if  evolution  is  the  gist  of  the  natural  process, 
the  texture  of  reality,  with  aspiration  for  its  psychi¬ 
cal  sign,  whence,  we  ask,  the  old  ideal  of  a  static 
Truth?  Whence  arose  the  strange  paradox  of  a 
mental  life  at  variance  with  the  essential  principle 
of  Nature? 

The  full  interest  of  the  problem  appears  only 
when  we  realize  the  immense  and  straining  effort  to 
which  Nature  must  have  been  subjected  in  the  bring¬ 
ing  forth  of  Mind.  For  Mind,  is,  so  to  speak,  sun¬ 
dered  from  the  parent  being  and  established  more 
or  less  at  cross-purposes  to  it.  It  has  achieved  for 
itself  a  kind  of  hegemony,  mainly  by  dint  of  a 
growing  aloofness  from  Nature,  engendering  and 
evidenced  in  the  paradoxical  difference  of  Truth 
and  Fact,  of  Ideal  and  Real.  Now,  however,  in  the 
Mind’s  maturity,  there  are  signs  of  a  coming 
rapprochement  with  Nature  and  of  mutual  under¬ 
standing.  Essentially  this  is  only  the  Mind’s  under¬ 
standing  of  itself,  for  Nature,  as  we  know  her,  is 
merely  the  human  habitation,  fitted  to  life  as  closely 
as  shell  to  mollusc.  Accordingly,  Natural  History 
in  its  inner  and  true  significance  is  the  history  of  the 
evolution  of  human  ideals,  and  in  this  history  is  our 
sole  norm  of  intelligibility  and  our  sole  and  proper 
index  to  the  world’s  character. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


49 


II 

i 

To  get  at  the  primitive  quality  of  Nature  we  must 

i  abstract,  as  far  as  possible,  all  that  constitutes  the 

ii  «  • 

organization  of  our  knowledge,  in  perception  as  well 
!  as  in  thought.  There  is  a  pre-natal  life  of  the  in¬ 
telligence  which  it  is  our  business  to  approximate, 

^  and  only  as  we  succeed  in  this  shall  we  be  able  to 
I  grasp  the  stoffliche  substance  of  reality.  In  that  old 
I  life  there  is  a  kind  of  maternal  warmth  and  nearness 
^  of  experience,  life  engrossed  in  the  sensuous  caress. 
So  far  as  we  are  able  to  judge,  all  the  lower  animals 
live  in  immediacy.  It  is  the  present  hunger  that 
makes  zestful  the  hunt,  the  sniff  of  present  danger 
that  urges  flight,  the  satiety  of  present  browsings 
that  lures  to  shady  repose;  the  amours  of  the 
mating  season  are  the  fresh  creation  of  each  re- 
f  curring  spring,  and  the  nestling  of  today  is  the  foe 
and  rival  of  tomorrow.  Foresight,  prevision,  the 
thought  which  represents  to  the  mind  something 
|!not  in  the  immediate  or  incipient  environment,  are 
absent  from  the  animal  consciousness,  and  so  there 
is  no  continuity  of  the  conscious  experience;  there 
.  is  only  a  kaleidoscopic  succession  of  momentary 
nows  and  heres,  each  dependent  for  its  quality  upon 
I  the  vivacity  of  attendant  sensation. 

j  But  this  primitive  experience  is  not  monotonous. 
Enlivened  by  Nature’s  whimsey  and  sport,  it  is  en¬ 
dowed  with  a  native  picturesqueness.  The  merest 
sensation  involves  a  play  of  sensation;  from  the  very 
beginning  mind  is  impressionable;  changefulness,  a 
certain  prismatic  character,  is  its  chief  first  token. 
Distinction  of  mood, — hunger,  fear,  rage,  desire, 
fondling,  frolic, — are  already  differentiating  mental 


Primitive 

conscious¬ 

ness 


50 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Natural 

selection 

of 

impressions 


Economy 
of  attention 


quality  and  laying  the  foundations  of  Intelligence. 

Correlative  with  the  natural  selection  of  traits  in 
the  physical  series,  there  is,  in  the  mental,  a  natural 
selection  of  impressions.  Susceptibility  to  certain 
perceptions,  readiness  for  certain  mental  reactions, 
are  as  important  factors  in  evolutional  security  as 
efficient  horns  or  an  adaptable  pair  of  heels.  And 
just  as  horns  are  pronged  or  coiled  and  heels  hoofed 
or  splay  to  suit  natural  exigencies,  so  impressions  are 
chosen,  ordered  and  fixed,  in  bringing  to  pass  the 
proportionate  anatomy  of  the  mind. 

Of  the  multitude  of  sensations  and  feelings  con¬ 
tinuously  assailing  consciousness,  the  greater  portion 
are  but  objects  of  idle  curiosity,  a  few  only  are  of 
vital  interest.  Whether  the  wind  blow  east  or  west 
is  of  little  account  to  the  grazing  herd,  save  it  blow 
toward  or  from  a  possible  covert  of  huntsmen;  the 
scent  of  danger  is  the  one  important  impression  for 
which  all  else  must  be  neglected.  In  the  long  run, 
survival  depends  upon  power  to  give  exclusive  heed 
to  significant  hints  and  signs.  This  is  the  raison 
d'etre  of  that  intensity  and  narrowness  of  percep¬ 
tion  which  we  note  in  the  lower  animals  and  the 
lower  races  of  man.  An  African  explorer  has  ob¬ 
served  that  the  natives  while  keenly  alive  to  signs 
of  the  trail  which  to  European  eyes  are  invisible,  are 
yet  oblivious  to  the  larger,  and  to  the  European 
wholly  impressive,  natural  features :  and  Darwin,  on 
his  famous  voyage,  made  note  that  the  Euegians 
were  immensely  impressed  with  the  boats  of  the 
white  man’s  ships,  which  at  least  came  within  the 
genus  of  their  dug-out  canoes,  while  to  the  ships 
themselves  they  were  indifferent  or  took  them  for 
granted.  In  the  natural  state  life-interests  are  too 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


51 


precariously  suited  to  circumstance  to  permit  mental 
breadth  or  freedom.  Perceptions  are  specialized  to 
the  present,  and  the  mind  made  bond  of  the  hour. 

Instinct,  with  its  huge  economies  of  mental  energy, 
is  the  first  agent  of  freedom.  But  instinct  is  con¬ 
fined  to  the  elementary  and  constant  factors  of  ex¬ 
perience,  and,  automatic  and  inelastic  as  it  should  be, 
it  is  incapable  of  serving  other  ends  than  its  proper 
automatisms.  True  deliverance  is  possible  only 
when  ideas  appear  which  are  able  to  disengage 
themselves  from  the  immediacy  of  sense  and  stand 
apart  as  entia  rationis,  as  in  a  way  veritable  sub¬ 
stances.  The  appearance  of  such  ideas  is  the  most 
significant  event  in  the  whole  history  of  the  mind’s 
growth.  Doubtless  there  pre-exists  a  need  which 
gives  them  birth,  a  sort  of  blind  striving  of  the 
sensuous  consciousness  and  a  general  orientation  of 
mind  in  preparation  for  thought;  but  for  all  this, 
the  ideas  come  into  being  only  through  strain  and 
effort  commensurate  with  the  metamorphosis. 

Evidence  is  afforded  by  the  primitive  wonder  in 
the  mere  power  of  abstraction  as  shown  in  the 
magical  potencies  ascribed  to  abstract  ideas.  When 
all  Nature  is  viewed  as  living  Nature,  all  the  varied 
display  of  physical  creation  is  conceived  as  endowed 
with  as  varied  a  spiritual  being.  But  if  things  are 
living  powers,  gifted  each  with  its  own  natural 
magic,  how  shall  ideas,  with  ubiquities,  powers,  and 
prophecies,  a  hundredfold  more  impressive  be  less 
living?  Of  course  the  question  is  not  baldly  put; 
none  the  less  it  is  felt  and  satisfied.  At  the  first  the 
idea  is  an  image,  but  it  is  also  much  more  than  this. 
It  is  an  image  whose  verisimilitude  reveals  its  real 
being  as  its  ubiquity  reveals  its  spiritual  nature.  It 


Instinct 
and  ideas 
agents  of 
freedom 


Natural 

magic 


52 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Similia 

similibus 


“Medicine’’ 


is,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  soul.  Eidolon,  phantasm, 
simulacrum,  whatever  its  sensuous  being,  it  is  im¬ 
bued  with  the  life  of  that  which  it  represents,  and 
is  not  to  be  reckoned  with  except  as  a  true  natural 
power. 

Imitations,  however  crude,  are  primitively  con¬ 
ceived  as  possessing  the  aptitudes  of  their  originals. 
Ceremonial  dances,  whether  of  war  or  the  hunt, 
seed-time  or  harvest,  are  invariably  imitative  or 
symbolic;  if  an  enemy  is  to  be  overthrown,  he  is 
slain  first  in  mock  combat;  if  a  harvest  is  desired, 
the  dancers  adorn  themselves  with  emblems  of  its 
fullness :  the  ceremony  is  always  an  abstract  of  the 
event  expected.  So,  too,  the  painted  symbols  upon 
the  face  or  weapons  of  the  Red  Indian  are  not  mere 
tokens;  they  are  powerful  “medicine”  for  the  con¬ 
founding  of  enemies.  Like  powers  are  in  the  ideal 
image ;  only  it,  being  veritable  spirit,  is  the  superior 
agency.  Ere  the  Indian  youth  is  initiated  to  man’s 
estate,  he  fasts  until  in  a  vision  he  beholds  the  image 
of  that,  be  it  animate  beast  or  animate  thing,  which 
is  thenceforth  to  be  his  “medicine,”  his  familiar,  the 
guiding  idea  of  his  individual  being.  With  its  like¬ 
ness  he  adorns  his  war-lock;  he  paints  its  image  on 
his  teepee;  as  sacredly  as  the  totem  of  his  clan,  he 
obeys  its  taboos  and  laws,  until  at  last  it  becomes 
a  part  of  his  proper  self  and  the  measure  of  his 
personality. 

Thought  is  thus  at  first,  because  of  its  sensuous 
splendor,  a  kind  of  living  heraldry  of  the  soul.  Yet 
just  on  account  of  the  brilliancy  of  its  blazonry,  it 
is  not  wholly  free,  not  nimble  nor  adept.  It  may 
serve  to  bring  into  being  all  the  wonderful  fauna 
of  mythic  nature,  dryad  and  hamadryad,  nymph 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


53 


and  genius  and  composite  beast,  but  the  swift,  true 
grasp  of  essences  is  yet  wanting.  To  know  the  keen 
zest  of  dialectic,  it  has  still  to  pierce  the  dazzle  of 
poetic  imagery. 

Among  the  earliest  instances  of  that  abstruser 
form  of  conception  which  makes  dialectic  possible 
are  notions  of  number.  The  first  really  compre¬ 
hensive  philosophy  of  the  Greeks — the  Pythago¬ 
rean — was  an  indeavor  to  find  the  essential  natures 
of  things  in  numerical  relations.  But  the  human 
mind  had  not  yet  attained  to  the  conception  of 
pure  essence,  pure  abstraction,  and  accordingly  the 
Pythagorean  Numbers  were  not  only  essences  but 
powers  and  deities  as  well.  A  geometric  figure, 
the  pentagram,  was  the  symbol  of  the  brotherhood 
and  at  the  same  time  a  talisman  of  magical  effi¬ 
ciency;  the  heavenly  spheres,  moving  in  just  pro¬ 
portion,  give  forth  a  celestial  harmony  which  is 
the  soul  of  the  universe;  the  One,  the  Monad,  is  a 
Supreme  Being,  in  a  pantheon  of  divine  Numbers. 

Number,  indeed,  represents  a  first  insight  into 
Nature’s  law  and  order.  At  the  very  emergence 
of  intelligence,  fourfold  direction,  the  four  quarters 
of  the  earth,  are  fixed  in  the  diviner’s  cross  or 
swastika,  while  the  science  of  the  calendar  is  the 
earliest  of  sciences.  To  mathematics,  as  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  abstraction,  attaches  all  that  peculiar  venera¬ 
tion  of  the  fixed  and  orderly  which  we  of  today 
accord  to  the  notion  of  Natural  Law.  Nature  as  re¬ 
vealed  in  Law  is  Nature  depersonalized;  it  is  Nature 
as  inexorable  Destiny  rather  than  placable  Whim, 
and  though  we  are  long  accustomed  to  this  concep¬ 
tion,  it  was,  at  the  birth  of  science,  an  insight  utterly 
unique,  hence  a  fit  theme  of  superstitious  awe. 


Pythagorean 

Numbers 


Natural 

Law 


54 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  joy  of 
dialectic 


Platonic 

Ideas 


The  dialectic  instinct  once  awakened,  general  con¬ 
ceptions  of  all  sorts  spring  into  being.  The  keen 
Greek  joy  in  this  young  dialectic  is  for  us,  in  the 
gray  years  of  thought,  only  to  be  vaguely  inferred 
from  remembered  delights  in  the  firstlings  of  our 
own  youthful  insights,  and  even  so  we  must  reckon 
in  the  centuries  of  conventionalizing  which  have 
rendered  chill  and  austere  ideas  that  were  to  the 
Greek  mind  gloriously  fresh  and  plastic.  Of  course 
it  was  in  the  mind  of  Plato  that  ideas  achieved 
apotheosis.  But  Plato,  I  think,  is  to  be  taken,  not 
as  one  apart,  but  as  the  logical  expositor  of  the 
idealizing  trend  of  the  human  mind.  Thoroughly 
Greek,  Plato  is  not  merely  Greek.  He  is  the  idealist 
of  all  time  because  he  expresses  so  winningly  the 
mind’s  naive  first  reverence  for  its  own  diviner  part. 
The  Ideas,  indeed,  seemed  to  Plato  so  essentially 
superhuman  that  he  could  not  credit  a  mere  mortal’s 
right  to  them.  They  were  to  him  veritable  divinities 
forming  an  august  assemblage  incomparably  more 
lofty  than  Olympus.  They  were  patterns  and  arche¬ 
types,  supreme  perfections,  which  the  human  soul 
sees  as  through  a  glass  darkly,  and  which  the  whole 
created  world  strives  with  desperate  dumb  longing 
to  appropriate  into  its  being.  This,  in  fact,  is  the 
reason  of  the  world’s  being.  The  World  of  Ideas 
purely  through  its  surpassing  perfection  evokes  from 
the  very  Void  itself  an  emulous  shadow  of  its  reality. 
The  ache  of  Ideal  plenum  is  too  intense  for  solitary 
Heaven  to  endure  till  the  consuming  desire  of  the 
counterworld  of  fact  springs  up  to  give  it  ease. 

So  convinced  was  Plato  of  the  divine  nature  of 
Ideas  that  he  could  only  account  for  human  knowl¬ 
edge  of  them  as  acquired  by  recollection  of  knowl- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


55 


edge  gained  in  some  previous,  nobler,  more  spiritual 
mode  of  being.  The  soul  in  its  moments  of  recol¬ 
lection  is  “like  a  bird  fluttering  up,  careless  of  the 
world  below”  and  he  whose  initiation  into  this 
world  is  recent,  “is  amazed  when  he  sees  anyone 
having  a  godlike  face  or  form,  which  is  the  ex¬ 
pression  or  imitation  of  divine  Beauty;  and  at 
first  a  shudder  runs  through  him  and  some  misgiv¬ 
ing  of  a  former  world  steals  over  him;  then  looking 
upon  the  face  of  his  beloved  as  of  a  god  he  rever¬ 
ences  him,  and  if  he  were  not  afraid  of  being 
thought  a  downright  madman,  he  would  sacrifice  to 
his  beloved  as  to  the  image  of  a  god.” 

It  is  not  other  than  the  Platonizing  instinct  which 
inspires  men  everywhere,  in  the  dawn  of  mental 
life,  to  deify  the  conceptions  which  dominate  their 
actions.  The  Christian  virtues.  Faith,  Hope  and 
Charity,  are  hardly  less  personal  than  the  Roman 
deities  Bellona  and  Fortuna,  Fides  and  Amor.  Nor 
are  these  abstractions  less  real  than  the  potent  an¬ 
cestral  species,  or  “elder  brothers,”  which  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Indians  conceive  as  the  parents  and  protectors 
of  all  living  kinds:  the  “elder  brother”  of  moose  is 
a  giant,  spirit  Moose,  of  the  bears  an  archetypal 
Bear,  of  buffaloes  a  manitou  Buffalo  animating  the 
prairie  herds.  So  also  the  rain  gods  and  wind  gods, 
the  earth  gods  and  water  gods  and  fire  gods,  the 
sun  gods  and  moon  gods,  found  in  all  paganisms  and 
filling  all  pantheons,  are  but  the  vivid  dramatizations 
of  form-compelling  thought. 

Every  lasting  idea  is  the  result  of  a  building  up 
and  subsequent  compression  of  many  related  im¬ 
pressions.  As  in  the  physical  world  organs  come 
into  being  by  a  long  process  of  selective  adaptation, 


Phcrdrus 

251a 


The  Elders 
of  the 
Kinds 


56 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Ideas 

incarnate 

Nature’s 

purpose 


The 

Golden  Age 


SO  in  the  mental  the  natural  selection  of  impressions 
creates  ideas.  The  elemental  conceptions  first  to 
appear  are  crystallizations  of  the  immemorial  expe¬ 
riences  of  the  race  and  are  thus  in  a  more  than 
Platonic  sense  true  recollections.  They  constitute  a 
subjective  index  of  evolution,  being,  one  might 
say,  the  patent  incarnation  of  Nature’s  intention  in 
bringing  conscious  life  to  pass.  They  represent 
those  facts  in  the  order  of  the  world  which  are  im¬ 
portant  to  conscious  being  and  are  meant  to  enter 
into  the  house  of  thought.  And  coming  as  in¬ 
tensifications  of  the  most  ancient  and  vital  of  all 
impressions,  it  is  little  wonder,  as  it  is  wholly  appro¬ 
priate,  that  the  mind,  in  the  intoxicating  hour  of  its 
initiation,  should  deem  them  revelations  of  more 
than  mortal  meaning.  So  it  is  that  we  find  them 
gods  of  primitive  men,  who  thus  instinctively  make 
supreme  such  of  their  experiences  as  must  lift  them 
above  the  brute.  Nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  in 
such  an  instinct  we  have  the  just  expression  of 
natural  destiny,  pointing  the  eventual  freedom  of 
the  mind. 


Ill 

There  is  an  inveterate  tendency  of  mankind,  which 
no  science  can  wholly  disillusion,  to  hark  back  to 
the  Golden  Age.  No  matter  how  wretched  and 
decadent,  there  is  scarce  a  tribe  the  world  over  but 
recalls  some  former  Eden,  some  Earthly  Paradise, 
blessed  with  the  clearest  of  rivers  and  the  plenti- 
fullest  fruitage  and  game;  and  no  matter  how 
drugged  and  lethargized  by  material  prosperity, 
there  is  not  a  people  but  remembers  Heroic  Days 
when  all  its  men  were  valiant  and  all  its  women 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


57 


fair.  The  explanation  is  patent.  Idealization  is 
instinctive,  but  the  ideal  estate  is  ever  at  odds  with 
reality,  and  so  gives  rise  to  the  fundamental  con¬ 
tradiction  which  the  human  mind  is  ceaselessly  en¬ 
deavoring  to  surmount.  The  barbarian,  from  the 
very  vividness  of  his  conception,  is  unable,  as  the 
civilized  man  is  loth,  to  admit  the  unreality  of  the 
ideal,  and  so  both  agree  in  relegating  to  the  past 
what  the  present  denies.  The  dream  of  the  Golden 
Age  springs  invincibly  from  the  homing  instinct  of 
the  imagination. 

Utopia  is  thus  less  a  memory  than  a  prophecy, 
gauging  the  mental  stature  of  its  creators  and  fore¬ 
casting  their  attainment.  At  the  same  time,  with 
the  more  sophisticated  races,  there  is  a  true  sense 
in  which  the  Golden  Age  is  an  age  of  the  past,  and 
that  is  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  age  of  poetry.  I  do 
not  mean  that  all  poetry  is  now  overpassed,  but 
there  is  a  prelogical  period  of  mental  history  which 
is  wholly  poetic.  When  thought  first  emerges  from 
sensation,  ideas  are  still  sensuous  in  texture;  though 
they  differ  from  sense  in  possessing  a  significance 
felt  to  be  other  than  immediate,  they  share  in  its 
intuitive  reality.  Life  other  than  in  the  concrete 
present  is  no  easy  achievement.  Myriads  of  ages 
of  hand-to-mouth  existence  have  inbred  the  convic¬ 
tion  of  the  superior  reality  of  what  is  immediately 
present,  and  ideas,  to  gain  the  least  initial  prestige, 
were  forced  to  appear  in  the  guise  of  present  being, 
as  sensuous  images.  In  order  that  abstract  thought 
might  exist  at  all  it  had  first  to  compete  with  sense- 
perception  in  its  own  likeness  and  to  make  itself 
more  interesting  than  sense-perception. 

This  is  doubtless  the  bionomic  reason  for  the  fact 


The  Age 
of  Poetry 


58 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Credulity 


The 

dramatic 
mood  of 
thought 


Language 


that  savage  men  are  indefinitely  credulous  of  what 
they  can  understand,  or  image,  and  equally  sceptical 
of  what  transcends  their  experience.  Of  African 
natives,  an  observer  writes :  “Their  imaginations 
become  so  lively  that  they  can  scarcely  distinguish 
between  their  dreams  and  their  waking  thoughts, 
between  the  real  and  the  ideal,  and  they  consequently 
utter  falsehood  without  intending,  and  profess  to 
see  things  which  never  existed.”  Tylor  relates: 
“When  the  Russians  in  Siberia  listened  to  the  talk 
of  the  rude  Kirgis,  they  stood  amazed  at  the  bar¬ 
barians’  ceaseless  flow  of  poetic  improvisation,  and 
exclaimed :  ‘Whatever  these  people  see  gives  birth 
to  fancies.’  ”  The  same  trait  is  found  in  all  primi¬ 
tive  thinking,  which  thus  appears  in  a  dramatic 
mood.  In  a  kind  of  natural  realism  of  the  imagina¬ 
tion,  it  gives  credence  to  whatever  presents  itself 
in  the  likeness  of  sense.  The  mood  is  the  poetic 
mood  of  poets  who  are  simple  and  clear-eyed  in  the 
old  instinctive  way  of  the  ballad-makers.  It  is  also 
the  mood  of  objective  reason  and  of  those  odd 
dream-lapses  into  the  life  of  the  past  which  some¬ 
times  amaze  us  by  their  explicitness  and  point. 

Doubtless,  at  the  first,  language  was  a  powerful 
aid  in  this  dramatization  of  ideas.  “The  mere  fact,” 
says  Tylor,  “of  its  individualizing  in  words  such 
notions  as  winter  and  summer,  cold  and  heat,  war 
and  peace,  vice  and  virtue,  gives  the  myth-maker  the 
means  of  imagining  these  thoughts  as  personal 
beings.”  But  language  is  also  the  main  or  exclusive 
agent  for  freeing  the  mind  from  the  discursiveness 
and  indirection  of  allegorical  thinking.  The  word 
is  a  potent  builder  of  myth ;  but  myth  itself,  by  its 
fixity  and  interplay  of  element,  tends  to  conven- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


59 


tionalize  ideas.  The  mythic  hero,  the  personified 
dawn,  the  god,  the  deed,  enter  into  the  mind’s 
habitual  furnishing  and  eventually  become  the  stock 
symbols  of  thought.  To  be  sure,  there  must  be 
some  facility  of  conception  before  any  myth  is  pos¬ 
sible,  but  with  this  attained,  the  mind  is  speedily 
induced  to  pass  from  the  dramatic  to  the  reflective 
mood  of  thought,  from  poetry  to  philosophy;  ’tis 
but  a  scant  transition  from  Hesiod  to  Thales.  The 
reflective  mood  finds  its  warrant  in  utility  rather 
than  in  attractiveness.  Its  business  is  to  systematize. 
If  imagination  is  the  faculty  which  has  lifted  man 
above  the  time-serving  brute,  making  possible  his 
insight  into  what  lies  behind  the  screen  of  sensa¬ 
tion,  reflection  is  the  instrument  by  means  of  which 
we  rear  the  wonderful  structure  of  human  knowl- 
edge ;  its  keenness  measures  possible  science,  its  flexi¬ 
bility  determines  mental  evolution. 

There  are  two  habits  or  modes  of  thought  essen¬ 
tial  to  all  reflection  which  are  responsible  for  the 
J  main  puzzle  of  philosophy  and  the  inherent  con¬ 
i'  tradictoriness  of  reason.  The  antithesis  to  which 
\  they  give  rise  has  been  variously  designated.  With 
the  Greeks  it  was  the  contradiction  of  the  one  and 

V  the  many,  of  being  and  becoming;  with  moderns  it 

V  is  the  problem  of  identity  in  difference,  or,  in 
natural  science,  of  uniformity  and  variation.  All 
these  antithetical  arise  from  contemplation  of  the 
thing,  that  which  suffers  change  yet  remains  self- 
identical.  In  the  mind’s  history  the  puzzle  has  found 
various  solutions.  In  aesthetics  reconciliation  is 
effected  by  the  notion  of  harmony;  in  psychology, 
by  the  conception  of  personality;  in  natural  science, 
by  the  doctrine  of  evolution. 


The 

reflective 

mood 


Notion  of 
thing 


60 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Laws  of 
thought 


Deifications 


Sophist 

247e 


The  two  habits  are  the  instinct  for  identification, 
or  the  psychical  experience  of  recognition,  and  the 
instinct  for  ascribing  causes,  due  to  experience  of 
volition, — that  is,  the  powers  of  thinking  and  will¬ 
ing,  which  in  joint  operation  constitute  human  effi¬ 
ciency.  It  is  the  instinct  of  causal  thinking  which 
induces  the  primitive  mind  to  animate  all  Nature 
with  will  and  intention.  It  is  the  instinct  for  form¬ 
ing  definite  and  responsible  estimates  of  things 
which  leads  to  those  composite  impressions  that 
we  call  ideas.  The  strength  of  the  instinct  for 
causes  appears  in  the  ready  ascription  of  magical 
powers  to  these.  The  intensity  of  the  effort  to  cre¬ 
ate  a  fixed  mental  furniture,  a  store  of  definite  and 
accountable  ideas,  appears  in  the  impulsive  erec¬ 
tion  of  general  notions  into  real  entities.  From 
interplay  of  the  two  arise  dynamic  or  deified  con¬ 
ceptions,  gods  of  the  morning,  noon  and  evening 
sun,  of  the  sowing,  the  young  vegetation,  and  the 
harvest,  of  the  time  for  making  war  and  the  time 
for  making  peace, — Horus,  Ra,  and  Turn;  Semele, 
Dionysus,  and  Demeter;  Mars  and  Quirinus, — all 
those  nodes  of  mythic  interest  through  which  the 
natural  classification  of  experience  has  been  per¬ 
fected. 

The  supreme  instance  of  this  happy  congruence 
is  the  Platonic  philosophy  of  Ideas  or  ideal  forms 
which  are  at  once  the  essential  being  and  the  forma¬ 
tive  causes  of  phenomena.  “The  boundary  and 
definition  of  being  is  none  other  than  power,”  and 
Ideas,  the  most  real,  are  also  the  most  dynamic  of 
beings.  They  are  more  than  mere  types  or  patterns ; 
they  are  “souls,”  personalities,  ideal  individuals. 
Here,  already,  is  foreshadowed  the  modern  solution 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


61 


which  finds  in  the  individual  the  one  abiding  reality, 
though  abiding  only  because  its  nature  is  to  change 
and  grow.  The  difference  between  this  and  the 
mere  symbol  is  the  difference  between  Everyman 
and  Hamlet.  In  the  one  the  experience  is  purely 
symbolic,  typical  of  “every  man’s’' ;  in  the  other  the 
experience,  still  broad  as  humanity,  is  yet  the  one 
possible  experience  of  the  one  soul,  its  avatar; 
Everyman  is  an  ideal  type,  Hamlet  an  ideal  in¬ 
dividual. 

Thinking  in  terms  of  individuality  is,  however,  a 
late  achievement  of  mankind.  There  is  a  long  com¬ 
munal  period  beforehand.  It  was  no  light  task 
for  the  human  mind  to  master  the  more  elemental 
and  necessary  ideal  identities.  These,  as  I  have  said, 
exist  more  or  less  at  cross-purposes  with  reality. 
It  is  their  nature  and  utility  to  be  fixed  and  con¬ 
stant;  it  is  the  nature  of  reality  to  be  ever  chang¬ 
ing.  There  are  no  such  things  as  genera  and  species, 
at  least  in  their  nude  abstraction,  outside  the  mind 
of  man;  yet  it  is  by  means  of  genera  and  species 
that  all  our  knowledge  is  co-ordinated.  It  is  by  dint 
of  ideal  integers,  for  example,  that  bank  accounts 
are  balanced ;  it  is  by  comparison  with  the  ideal  hus¬ 
band,  composite  of  all  husbandly  virtues,  that  real 
husbands  are  assorted  and  valued.  Certain  same¬ 
nesses  must  be  assumed  in  reality  and  precipitated 
in  thought  before  any  reasoning  may  take  place.  If 
this  process  gives  the  lie  to  truth,  making  it,  because 
of  its  very  constancy,  untrue,  it  still  has  the  suffi¬ 
cient  plea  of  vast  utility. 

In  magic,  the  science  of  primitive  men,  the  evolu¬ 
tion  of  the  category  is  already  well  under  way. 
Says  Lang:  ^^Among  savages  the  belief  that  like 


Type 

versus 

Individual 


Genera 
and  species 


Imitative 

magic 


Invultuation 


Althaea  and 
Meleager 


62  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

produces  like  is  exemplified  by  many  practices.  The 
New  Caledonians,  when  they  wish  their  yam  plots 
to  be  fertile,  bury  in  them  with  mystic  ceremonies 
certain  stones  which  are  naturally  shaped  like 

yams . When  the  Bushmen  want  wet  weather 

they  light  fires,  believing  that  the  black  smoke  clouds 
will  attract  black  rain  clouds ;  while  the  Zulus  sacri¬ 
fice  black  cattle  to  attract  black  clouds  of  rain.  .  . 
The  custom  of  making  a  wax  statuette  of  an  enemy, 
and  piercing  it  with  pins  or  melting  it  before  the 
fire,  so  that  the  detested  person  might  waste  as 
his  semblance  melted,  was  common  in  mediaeval 
Europe,  was  known  to  Plato,  and  is  practiced  by 
the  Negroes.”^  If  Thomas  Hardy  is  to  be  trusted, 
this  practice  has  hardly  yet  disappeared  from  Eng¬ 
land,  where  it  must  have  been  familiar  in  Shake¬ 
speare’s  time : 

“Have  I  not  hideous  death  within  my  view, 

Retaining  but  a  quantity  of  life 
Which  bleeds  away,  even  as  a  form  of  wax 
Resolveth  from  his  figure,  ’gainst  the  fire.” 

The  idea  of  causal  connection  underlying  such  rites 
is  made  explicit  in  the  Babylonian  incantation : 

As  these  images  tremble,  dissolve,  and  melt  away. 

So  may  the  sorcerer  tremble,  dissolve,  and  melt  away. 

The  brand  which  typifies  the  life  of  Meleager  and 
whose  burning  causes  his  death  is  a  classical  in¬ 
stance  of  the  like  belief,  as  burning  in  effigy  is 
doubtless  a  modern  survival.  The  analogy  of  fire 
and  life — alike  in  their  evanescence,  in  their  cease- 

1  “When  therefore  men  secretly  suspect  each  other  at  the  sight  of, 
say,  waxen  images  fixed  either  at  their  doors  or  at  the  cross-ways  or 
at  the  tombs  of  their  parents,  it  is  no  good  telling  them  to  make  light 
of  such  things  because  they  know  nothing  certain  about  them.” — Plato, 
Laws,  933  (Jowctt). 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


63 


less  onstriving  activity,  in  their  association  with 
light  and  power,  in  their  apparent  beginning  and 
ending  in  naught, — is  one  of  the  most  powerful  of 
magical  and  religious  motives.  The  perpetual  fire 
guarded  by  the  Vestals  at  Rome  and  by  the  Virgins 
of  the  Sun  at  Cuzco  symbolized  the  life  of  the  city 
and  the  state,  as  the  hearth-fire  is  the  symbol  of  the 
life  of  the  household  and  the  altar  of  its  worship. 
The  Parsis  have  erected  such  a  symbolism  into  a 
religion,  and  it  is  an  essential  part  of  the  religion 
of  many  of  the  tribes  of  North  America.  Says  an 
Indian  teacher : 

Henceforth  the  fire  must  never  be  suffered  to  go  out  in  your 
(  lodge.  Summer  and  winter,  day  and  night,  in  the  storm  or 
[  when  it  is  calm,  you  must  remember  that  the  life  in  your  body 
and  the  fire  in  your  lodge  are  the  same  and  of  the  same  date. 
If  you  suffer  your  fire  to  be  extinguished  at  that  moment 
your  life  will  be  at  its  end. 

f 

'  Thus  we  see  from  the  beginning  evidences  of 
that  intense  search  for  analogies  which  is  the  key 
:  to  the  development  of  human  thought.  The  whole 
later  aspect  of  the  mind  bristles  with  illustrations  of 
1  the  impressiveness  of  these  ideal  identities.  It  ap- 
I  pears  in  the  councils  and  inquisitions  which  have 
■  banned  and  anathematized  dissimilar — heterodox — 
f  thinking.  It  is  the  rationale  of  classificatory  sci¬ 
ences,  based  on  analogical  characters.  It  is  the 
!  intellectual  motive  of  those  strange,  irrational 
1  Monisms,  Henisms,  and  Materialisms,  which  seek 
to  reduce  to  some  essential  One  a  universe  which 
.  is  so  palpably  a  multitude. 

Nor  can  there  be  doubt  that  the  inveterate  con¬ 
servatism  natural  to  a  complex  being  has  vastly 
aided  this  ideal  concentration.  Novelty,  whether  in 


Sacred 

fire 


Keokuk 

quoted 


64 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Ritual 

thinking 


Taboo 


environment  or  thought,  is  instinctively  shunned  by 
a  not  over-adaptable  animal,  and  the  savage  finds 
reason  a  too  incommensurable  instrument  to  be 
handily  employed.  He  prefers  trust  in  the  surety 
of  instinct  and  custom.  His  thinking  is  so  governed 
by  the  specific  instance  that  it  takes  the  form  of  a 
kind  of  mental  ritual  or  cult  of  ideas;  and  since 
thinking  is  essentially  a  social  phenomenon,  whether 
between  different  minds  or  the  same  mind’s  different 
moods,  it  readily  succumbs  to  ritualistic  influences. 
Indeed,  the  chief  business  of  cult  and  rite  appears 
to  be  definition  and  conservation  of  ideas.  Tribal 
traditions  and  ceremonies  are  the  books  of  untutored 
peoples  and  the  storehouses  of  their  accumulated 
experiences.  Just  as  the  child’s  imitative  play  is 
his  natural  work,  yielding  him  future  facility  in  the 
real  stress  of  life,  so  the  imitative  dances  and  cere¬ 
monials  of  primitive  men  are  the  beginnings  of 
social  training.  The  taboos,  or  prohibitions,  by 
which  savages  protect  game  during  the  close  season 
or  forbid  marriage  within  the  family  are  enforced 
by  a  moral  imperative  stronger  than  the  civilized 
conscience  and  are  no  less  truly  instinctive  gropings 
after  natural  law  than  the  establishments  of  mean¬ 
ings  by  the  symbolisms  of  tribal  mysteries  are  in¬ 
stinctive  assimilations  of  the  forms  of  thought.  All 
the  ordinances  of  tribal  life  are,  psychologically 
speaking,  but  fixations  of  meanings  whose  stability 
is  attested  by  the  slowness  of  their  erosion, — form¬ 
ing,  as  they  still  do,  much  of  the  ‘^color”  of  what 
passes  as  modern  thought. 

IV 

So  far  we  have  sketched  the  beginnings  of  recog- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


65 


nition  and  the  establishment  of  fixed  conceptions  as 
tools  of  reflective  thought.  There  remains  to  treat 
the  emergence  of  personality  as  the  principle  of 
explanation. 

Sociologists  tell  us  that  social  pressure  every¬ 
where  results  in  “like-mindedness.”  In  the  forma¬ 
tive  period  of  society  it  is  essential  that  individuals 
should  act  according  to  common  understandings 
which  are  the  natural  prelude  of  law.  The  agency 
of  their  attainment  (granted  the  community  of  feel¬ 
ing  and  appetite  which  a  common  human  nature 
presupposes)  appears  to  be  the  strong  man  or  hero. 
The  individual  who  succeeds  in  most  widely  im¬ 
pressing  his  personality  upon  his  fellows  becomes 
the  ethnic  ideal  or  type  toward  which  they  trend. 
Abraham,  Herakles,  Romulus,  Beowulf,  Arthur — 
each  binds  together  in  a  single  personality  the  ideal 
traits  of  a  race.  Each  represents  the  like  thought 
of  all  the  young  men  and  maids  of  his  folk,  the 
pattern  of  their  emulation  and  their  heart’s  desire. 

Hero-worship  has  certainly  had  a  deal  to  do  with 
the  humanizing  of  the  species.  The  hero  is  the  first 
conscious  formulation  of  an  end  of  evolution.  He 
is  already  the  better  self  of  those  whose  admiration 
he  excites  and  who  to  the  extent  of  their  power 
approximate  to  his  likeness.  By  its  very  suggestive¬ 
ness  his  personality  dominates  theirs,  measuring  in 
his  attainment  their  possibility.  The  discrepancy, 
however,  is  keenly  felt,  and  there  is  no  more  pathetic 
abnegation  in  human  history  nor  any  severer  arraign¬ 
ment  of  average  futility  than  the  ascription  by  primi¬ 
tive  folk  of  an  immortality  to  their  heroes  which 
they  deem  themselves  unworthy  to  share;  it  is  only 
Elijahs  who  are  snatched  up  into  Heaven. 


Personality 
a  principle 
of  explana¬ 
tion 


Hero 

Worship 


66 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Psychic 

prowess 


Mana  of 
The  dead 


Megalithic 

tombs 


Primarily  the  hero  is  a  chieftain.  That  is  to  say, 
he  is  a  man  exalted  above  his  fellows  not  only  by 
prowess  and  wisdom,  but  by  a  subtler,  more  occult 
endowment.  In  primitive  belief  every  man  is  gifted 
with  a  natural  potency  due  to  his  nature  such  as 
it  is.  But  some  men  possess  a  higher  potentiality 
of  this  sort  than  others,  whom  they  are  thus  able 
to  sway.  The  warrior  is  victor  not  because  of 
superior  skill  or  craft,  but  because  his  magic  out¬ 
weighs  that  of  his  enemy.  If  he  fall  victim,  the 
reverse  is  true,  and  it  is  accordingly  his  anxious 
interest  to  fortify  in  every  possible  way  his  occult 
powers.  Now  the  chieftain  is  a  man  more  highly 
“charged”  than  his  tribesmen,  and  it  is  by  virtue 
of  his  surplus  potency  that  he  rules.  It  is  his  to 
lay  and  lift  taboos,  his  to  “smell  out”  and  punish 
evildoers,  his  to  reward  or  despoil.  He  is  the  in¬ 
carnate  law  exercising  a  sovereignty  more  intangible 
and  powerful  than  any  in  modern  culture. 

The  fact  that  the  chieftain’s  power  springs  from 
no  mere  physical  prowess  is  attested  not  only  by 
his  wizardly  offices,  by  his  erection  to  demi-god- 
ship, — or  even,  as  Egyptian  kings  and  Roman  em¬ 
perors,  to  godship, — but  most  irrefutably  by  loyalty 
to  his  still  living  personality  after  death.  Indeed, 
death  seems  rather  to  increase  than  diminish  his 
potency;  freed  from  the  flesh  there  is  little  to  let 
or  hinder  the  play  of  spiritual  powers.  Manes- 
worship  is  perhaps  the  most  ancient  of  religious 
venerations.  Certainly  it  is  a  fact  of  no  light  sig¬ 
nificance  that  the  vast  laborious  monuments — cairn 
and  cromlech,  dolmen  and  menhir — erected  by  pre¬ 
historic  centuries  of  men  are  mainly  monuments  to 
the  dead.  No  house  cf  the  living  rivals  the  pyramid 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


67 


of  Cheops ;  and  no  labor  for  the  living  counts  a  tithe 
I  of  the  ancient  labors  for  the  dead.  There  could  be 
no  more  telling  gauge  of  the  intensity  of  the  mental 
I  stress  to  which  mankind  was  subjected  in  the  process 
of  social  fusion  than  the  spectacle  of  naked  neolithic 
;  savages  hewing  out  and  lifting  up  the  cyclopean 
i  avenues  of  megaliths  on  the  plains  of  Brittany,  or 
of  the  sweltering  multitudes  of  Egypt  toiling  the 
huge  toil  of  the  pyramids.  In  the  old  monuments 
I  we  are  presented  with  a  veritable  embalmment  of  a 
:  period  of  mental  history,  the  vastness  of  their  dead 
weight  furnishing  the  proportional  of  the  might  of 
the  living  idea  that  demanded  their  erection. 

The  case  of  Egypt,  where  the  passion  for  mere 
mass  reaches  acme,  is  particularly  enlightening,  for 
here  we  seem  to  see  an  instance  of  Nature  over¬ 
reaching  her  own  intention.  The  mightiness  of 
Egypt’s  monuments  is  no  more  striking  than  the 
inertia  of  Egypt’s  ideals,  the  mummied  perpetuity 
of  the  thoughts  and  institutions  of  the  land  whose 
one  book  is  the  Book  of  the  Dead.  It  is  as  if  the 
social  consciousness,  wakened  and  focused  in  the 
dynasties  of  the  pyramids,  had  fused  and  fixed  past 
all  dissolution  the  possibilities  of  Egyptian  nature. 
Thereafter  was  never  any  chance  for  growth,  never 
opportunity  for  the  democratization  of  thought. 

Every  civilization  creates  its  own  cult  of  ideas 
and  establishes  its  own  norm  of  conduct  and  char¬ 
acter.  In  the  era  of  beginnings  it  is  hardly  to  be 
doubted  that  autocratic  centralization  is  the  in¬ 
evitable  instrument  for  the  fixation  of  these.  Y/et 
if  there  is  to  be  growth,  the  community  of  civiliza¬ 
tion  can  serve  only  as  a  starting-point  for  differentia¬ 
tions;  the  net  asset  of  traits  which  makes  the  com- 


The 

Pyramids 


Egypt 


Civilization 
a  cult  of 
ideas 


68 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


‘Harmony 
and  uni¬ 
versality 
in  the 
Classic 


True 

individuals 


munal  individual  or  racial  personality  should  not  be 
allowed  to  exhaust  the  race’s  possibilities,  but  should 
serve  merely  as  a  basis  for  sympathy  with  individual 
developments.  Egypt  and  China  furnish  instances 
of  peoples  balked  of  this  natural  development;  in 
each  case  the  social  autocracy  overpowered  the  in¬ 
dividual  bent,  perhaps  because  of  the  very  intensity 
of  the  social  fusion,  and  consequently  only  a  type, 
or  race  personality  came  into  being. 

For  the  happier  development  we  look  to  classicism. 
It  is  true  that  the  classic  ideal,  no  less  than  the  con¬ 
vention  and  ritual  of  Egypt,  is  a  caste  ideal,  a  de¬ 
mand  for  like-thought,  identity,  unity;  but  it  is 
expression  of  this  ideal  in  a  far  truer  mode.  The 
classic  type  is  not  an  inanimate,  weighted  type; 
its  very  essence  ms  buoyancy  and  life;  it  not  only 
identifies  Being  but  it  achieves  Becoming  and  so  is 
imbued  with  evolutional  vitality.  Harmony,  uni¬ 
versality,  and  temperate  mastery  are  its  key-notes. 
We  have  seen  how  these  are  exemplified  in  Plato’s 
Ideas,  which  are  universal  as  being  the  essences 
each  of  some  natural  kind  or  species,  harmonious 
as  perfect  in  their  individual  natures  while  uniting 
in  one  guise  a  manifold  of  instances,  and  masterful 
as  being  the  causal  prototypes  of  all  partial  realiza¬ 
tions  in  the  physical  world.  Here  first  we  have  true 
individuals  in  the  ideal  world;  they  are  universal 
individuals,  personalities,  archons  of  the  mind;  and 
just  as  the  Homeric  Olympus  is  the  visible  habitat 
of  Hellenic  imagination,  so  is  the  Platonic  Hierarchy 
of  Ideals  the  full  revelation  of  the  conceptual  and 
moral  consciousness  of  classic  character. 

But  even  so,  no  last  development  of  personality 
is  yet  attained.  The  classic  ideal  defeats  by  its  very 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


69 


perfection.  The  fullness  of  its  realization  denies 
evolution.  Even  its  activity  is  a  kind  of  rest;  it  is 
a  contemplative,  imitative  activity,  the  ‘'unmoving 
activity”  of  Aristotle.  The  beauty  of  the  Greek 
temple,  in  its  utter  attainment,  has  been  contrasted 
with  the  beauty  of  the  Gothic  cathedral,  in  its  utter 
aspiration.  No  analogy  could  better  emphasize  the 
peril  of  classicism.  Its  perfection  pronounces  its 
doom ;  for  perfection  is  won  only  through  restraint, 
through  studied  and  explored  law  and  form, — and 
a  dominating  care  for  form  but  too  insidiously 
develops  into  formalism,  into  a  perverse  care  for 
form.  Lack  of  restraint,  profusion,  a  kind  of 
Titanic  zest  of  endeavor,  give  to  Gothic  art  the 
wild  and  imperfect  beauty  that  can  readily  fall  into 
the  grotesque  but  may  occasionally  rise  into  the 
sublime;  it  is  the  type  of  beauty  which  makes  Nature 
wonderful  and  which  we  feel,  instinctively,  must 
somehow  be  the  eternal  type.  Classic  humanism  at 
its  best  gives  us  the  noble  measure  of  human  achieve¬ 
ment;  but  it  is  pervaded  by  a  Pindaric  weakness 
for  “the  things  of  mortals,”  and  if  man  is  ever  to 
pass  beyond  his  mere  mortality  it  must  be  in  another 
than  the  classic  mode.  This  is  shown  only  too 

» 

clearly  in  the  historic  development.  Classic  domina¬ 
tion  of  form  and  thought  degenerates  into  Pro¬ 
crustean  measurement.  The  stir  and  tremor  of 
growth  is  yet  denied,  and  so  the  richness  of  promise. 
These  come  only  with  imperfection  and  freedom. 
Only  to  imperfect  things  is  freedom  meaningful, 
and  only  to  free  desire  is  promise  sweet. 

V 

Nature  is  never  long  content  with  fixity.  Her 

6 


Fatal 

perfection 


Only  the 
imperfect 
is  free 


70 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Predestined 

rebels 


Progress 


significant  fact  is  her  constant  bringing  forth  of 
new  life,  her  boundless  evolutional  energy.  The 
social  forces  that  make  for  the  consolidation  of 
human  experience  and  the  establishment  of  com¬ 
munal  like-mindedness  are  continually  offset  by  in¬ 
dividual  idiosyncrasies.  There  is  an  energy  of 
growth  ever  straining  the  leash  of  mortal  circum¬ 
stance,  and  the  individual’s  feeling  of  constraint 
under  social  domination  and  his  hunger  for  a  larger 
and  richer  experience  are  its  proper  subjective  signs. 
We  look  with  a  kind  of  wonder  upon  the  suicidal 
zeal  of  reformers  such  as  Bruno  and  Roger  Bacon, 
upon  the  intellectual  intoxication  of  minds  such  as 
those  of  Paracelsus  and  Spinoza,  yet  if  we  consider 
them  in  the  broad  light  of  Nature’s  way,  their  very 
perversities  are  seen  to  be  her  necessary  expression. 
They  are  predestined  to  rebellion;  the  purpose  of 
their  creation  is  their  breaking  with  established  con¬ 
ceits. 

Human  instinct  for  a  freer  life  is  thus  the  inner 
form  of  Nature’s  irrepressible  expansion.  No  per¬ 
fection  is  won  except  to  be  destroyed,  except  to  be 
followed  by  new  anticipations  and  new  ideals. 
These  new  ideals  often  seem  to  us  erratic,  and  for 
this  reason  we  frequently  meet  in  the  history  of 
thought  as  in  the  histories  of  nations,  eras  of  seem¬ 
ing  degeneration  and  dullness  wherein  the  meanings 
of  the  old  masters  are  lost  and  a  one-sided  en¬ 
thusiasm  replaces  the  symmetry  of  whole  concep¬ 
tions.  But  such  periods  always  result  in  the  long 
run  in  a  return  to  the  satisfying  full  view  with  some 
added  insight  and  elevation  of  meaning;  and  it  is 
for  this  reason  that  history  has  been  likened  to  a 
spiral  progression,  the  measure  of  advance  being  the 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


71 


added  altitude,  the  added  comprehensiveness  of  the 
standpoint  won. 

In  the  first  revolt  against  convention,  the  likeliest 
creed  of  the  revolutionary  spirit  is  glorification  of 
the  flesh.  The  cramp  and  restraint  of  law  become 
unbearable  and  long-pent  impulses,  irrepressible  at 
last,  break  forth  in  the  riot  of  sense.  After  Rome 
come  the  barbarians,  and  the  world  is  seemingly 
broken  up  just  for  the  remaking. 

“Back  to  Nature!”  is  the  slogan  of  the  epoch, 
and  by  Nature  is  meant  that  frank  avowal  of  naked 
whim  which  it  has  been  the  long  schooling  of  reason 
to  suppress.  Licence  is  the  order  of  the  day  and 
Unreason  is  its  lord.  Illustration  is  furnished  by 
those  paroxysms  of  orgiastic  worship  whereby  the 
Asiatics  sought  in  the  madness  of  sense  to  rise  above 
the  obliterations  of  self  and  personality  entailed  by 
their  crushing  despotisms — worships  which  grad¬ 
ually  penetrated  Greece  and  Rome  as  their  peoples 
more  and  more  fell  in  thrall  to  the  tyranny  of  the 
state.  Illustration  is  afforded  again  by  the  “ghost 
dance”  craze  of  the  American  Indians,  a  ceremonial 
in  which  the  Red  Men  seek  to  free  themselves  from 
the  oppressive  visitation  of  the  white  man's  culture, 
and,  in  a  past  revivified,  to  live  once  more  the  old 
life  of  their  race.  Illustration  in  a  third  mode  is 
the  mystic  and  ascetic  struggle  for  intuitions  tran¬ 
scending  sense  and  reason,  alike  paltry  to  its  view. 
The  Bacchanalian  orgy,  the  ghost  dance,  the  mystic 
communion  of  the  Quietist, — all  are  efforts  to  over¬ 
leap  the  boundaries  of  time  and  grasp  for  the  present 
need  the  elusive  substance  of  reality. 

The  creed,  the  rationale,  one  might  almost  say 
the  gist  of  such  effort  is  realism.  It  is  reaction 


“Back  to 
Nature” 


Mysticism 


72 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Realism 


Reality  is 
significance 


against  the  futility  of  reason,  and  of  the  ideal  which 
is  reason’s  essence,  and  it  is  endeavor  to  achieve 
tangible  contact  with  real  being,  to  appropriate  in 
the  compass  of  the  individual  something  of  the  larger 
life  of  Nature.  After  long  domination  classicism 
lapses  into  formalism.  The  living  essence  of  reality 
is  lost,  and  the  mind  concerns  itself  with  meaning¬ 
less  repetitions.  The  revolt  from  this,  the  return 
to  Nature,  is  realism,  which  conceives  itself  as  an 
effort  to  apprehend  the  world  as  it  actually  is,  and 
which  is  in  fact  an  endeavor  to  obtain  a  new  and 
significant  point  of  view  with  respect  to  Nature  and 
so  to  furnish  the  basis  for  the  development  of  a 
new  idealism. 

It  is  true  that  in  aiming  to  treat  fact  without  bias 
realism  misses  the  fact,  as  must  ever  be  in  a  humanly 
constituted  world.  The  reality  of  things  is  their 
significance  and  the  being  of  significance  is  promise. 
Our  very  perceptions  are  biases;  and  what  we  name 
‘Tacts”  are  but  situations  seized  and  defined  with 
reference  to  some  perceptual  interest.  Back  of  all 
our  material  experience  are  those  complexities  of 
interest,  inherital  and  creative,  which  color  the 
present  with  the  prejudices  of  the  past  and  with 
those  hopes  for  the  future  which  it  is  the  office 
of  “facts”  and  “things”  to  make  precise  and  stimu¬ 
lating.  Hence,  like  every  form  of  living  in  im¬ 
mediacy,  realism  defeats  itself ;  at  its  own  valuation 
it  is  contradiction  and  sham.  Its  practice,  however, 
is  better  than  its  understanding.  No  activity  is  pos¬ 
sible  without  the  exercise  of  selective  power,  and 
selection  is  the  beginning  of  idealization.  Realism 
brings  to  its  selective  activity  a  sincere  and  recipient 
mood.  The  nature  of  the  realist  determines  the 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


73 


choice  and  fashioning  of  the  material.  Thus  the 
most  literal  imitation  is  in  some  degree  idealization, 
colored  at  least  by  that  racial  recollection  which  is 
the  form  of  the  mind  and  so  sharing  the  general 
trend  of  development  of  which  this  form  is  the  ex¬ 
pression  and  index. 

So,  in  last  analysis,  return  to  Nature  is  return 
to  human  nature.  It  is  the  renewal  of  that  reliance 
upon  personal  inspiration  which  classicism  tempers 
with  a  certain  impersonal  austerity  and  which  ritual¬ 
ized  classicism,  or  formalism,  utterly  snuffs  out. 
“A  cynic  might  say,”  says  Bosanquet,  ‘hhat  the  his¬ 
tory  of  philosophy  is  a  process  in  which  the  meaning 
of  Plato  and  Aristotle  is  periodically  forgotten  by 
their  disciples  and  rediscovered  by  their  antago¬ 
nists.”  This  is  perhaps  more  than  a  cynical  truth. 
For  is  not  the  meaning  of  Plato  and  Aristotle  an 
eternal  restiveness  of  the  creative  instinct,  satisfied 
only  in  the  evolution  of  new  patterns  of  desire? 
And  is  not  this  the  necessary  and  perpetual  dis¬ 
covery  of  every  revolt  to  Nature  when  brought  to 
its  final  self-realization? 

With  the  attainment  of  this  insight  there  is 
always  reaction  from  the  blindness  of  mere  realism. 
There  is  awakened  a  better  consciousness  of  values 
and  a  higher  self-respect.  The  fruit  of  these  is  that 
chastening  of  the  sense  and  purgation  of  the  passions 
which  is  the  beginning  of  spiritual  freedom.  Some¬ 
times,  to  be  sure,  the  first  awakening  comes  in  the 
guise  of  romanticism,  which,  however  earnest  and 
beautiful  in  the  age  when  chivalry  and  Christian 
humanhood  were  in  the  making,  is  nowadays  but 
a  lazy  and  superficial  idealism;  yet,  in  the  end,  this 
always  gives  way  to  an  impulsive  and  vigorous 


Return  to 

human 

nature 


The 

patterns 
of  desire 


74 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


generation  of  types,  the  subjective  token  of  a  hale 
mental  growth  and  the  proper  rationality  of  exist¬ 
ence. 


VI 


Metaphysics 

1090b 


Ideal 
Evolution 
is  an 
initiation 


Mental  history  is  thus  the  significant  content  of 
evolution,  and  the  scope  and  character  of  the  mind’s 
operations  under  the  varying  dominations  of  mould¬ 
ing  influences  give  us  our  final  clue  to  Nature.  “Her 
phenomena  show,”  says  Aristotle,  “that  Nature  is 
not,  like  an  ill-made  tragedy,  a  string  of  episodes”; 
and  what  Nature  is,  her  inner  plot  and  action,  the 
mind  itself  necessarily  reflects.  For  the  very  being 
of  mind  is,  in  a  sense,  recapitulation  of  its  own 
creation,  and  viewed  genetically  it  may  be  expected 
therefore  to  point  its  own  natural  destiny.  That 
which  it  may  be  shown  to  have  brought  and  to  be 
bringing  to  pass  is  that  for  which  we  must  surmise 
it  came  to  be. 

To  gain  some  conception  of  this  process  has  been 
the  purpose  of  my  essay,  and  the  general  result 
of  the  enquiry  may  now  be  stated.  The  evolution 
of  the  ideal  life  is  a  gradual  initiation  of  intelligence 
into  Nature’s  secret  ways  to  the  end  that  personali¬ 
ties  shall  he  created  zidiich  are  efficient  both  to  under¬ 
stand  and  to  aid  the  natural  development. 

That  such  personalities  might  be  free  and  capable 
agents  it  was  essential  that  they  be  given  a  being 
apart  from  and  more  or  less  out  of  accord  with 
the  main  course  of  creation.  They  were,  in  other 
words,  to  become  minor  creators  in  the  whole  of 
creation.  This  seeming  miracle  is  what  Nature 
achieves  in  the  generation  of  an  idealizing  intelli¬ 
gence  capable  in  some  degree  of  forestalling  her 
own  operations. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  IDEALS 


75 


It  is  worth  while  briefly  to  resume  the  steps  of 
the  process.  In  the  beginning  we  found  conscious¬ 
ness  in  thrall  to  an  utterly  mobile  and  whimsical  Resume 
reality.  There  was  naught  but  the  ceaseless  play 
of  feeling  and  sense,  the  flux  and  flow  of  the  Hera- 
cliteans.  Slowly,  by  dint  of  instinct  first,  time-bridg¬ 
ing  experience  came  into  being;  identities  were 
established,  and  the  foundation  of  ideal  permanence 
was  laid.  Thereafter  was  the  tremendous  fusion 
and  refusion  of  these  identities  under  the  driving 
impulsion  of  the  social  instinct,  until  at  last  an  im¬ 
mobility  of  culture — in  some  cases  never  to  be  over¬ 
come — had  given  (to  communes  and  peoples)  at 
least  the  external  form  of  individuality.  With  this 
apotheosis  of  sameness  the  extreme  disaccord  of 
Nature  and  intelligence  is  reached.  The  ideal  struc¬ 
ture  in  its  fixity  is  at  absolute  variance  with  Nature 
in  her  change,  and  Plato  in  despair  of  reconciliation 
cleaves  the  ideal  world  wholly  from  the  real.  But 
the  fixity  has  been  established  only  for  the  safe¬ 
guarding  of  an  aggressive  and  growing  individuality 
which  must  pursue  its  way  wholly  aloof  from  mere 
phenornenality  if  it  is  to  attain  permanence  and 
personality.  The  gradual  emancipation  and  democ¬ 
ratization  of  thought  is  the  carrying  on  of  this 
development.  We  have  seen  it  pursue  its  various  Dialectic 
dialectic:  in  art,  passing  from  the  first  idealism  to 
classicism,  thence  through  ritualism  to  realism  and 
renewed  idealism;  in  philosophy,  passing  from 
personified  whim  to  the  notion  of  Nature’s  con¬ 
stancy  and  law,  and  finally  to  Nature’s  purpose  and 
ideality;  in  science,  progressing  from  a  mere  re¬ 
liance  upon  magical  analogies  to  the  establishment 
of  genuine  identities,  the  conception  of  cause,  and 


of  thought 


76 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Personality 


From 
bondage 
to  freedom 


finally  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  The  perception 
that  idealism,  teleology,  and  evolution  are  the  same 
is  the  goal  of  our  present  arrival.  Each  defines 
personality,  each  grasps  the  permanent  and  prophetic 
essence  of  thought. 

This  development  of  conscious  life  wherein  it 
passes  from  utter  dependence  upon  the  sensations 
and  feelings  of  the  moment  to  inclusive  personality 
and  temporal  independence  in  the  realm  of  ideas  is 
what  Spinoza  described  as  the  passage  from  bondage 
to  freedom  whereby  the  soul  wins  immortality.  It 
is  true  that  Spinoza’s  conception  was  transcendental 
rather  than  evolutionary  and  that  it  seemingly 
stopped  short  of  the  notion  of  personality  as  grow¬ 
ing  and  as  surviving  by  reason  of  growth.  It  cul¬ 
minated  rather  in  a  rest  in  the  eternal  verities,  in 
peaceful  accord  with  an  immutable  Divine  Nature. 
Evolution  substitutes  for  this  an  active,  assimilative 
spiritual  life.  But  evolution  none  the  less  reiterates 
Spinoza’s  argument  with  a  modern  pertinence  in 
revealing  personality  as  Nature’s  unique  embodi¬ 
ment  of  a  truly  persistent  being — one  that  persists 
not  by  grace  of  time,  as  the  slow-eroding  hills,  but 
by  conquering  and  compassing  time,  past  and  future 
being  gathered  into  an  endless  present.  We  have 
not  sufficient  warrant  to  say,  perhaps,  that  the  soul 
must  exist  forever;  our  knowledge  is  still  confined 
to  a  brief  arc  of  experience.  But  we  can  assert  as 
evident  truth  that  the  course  of  mental  life  assumes 
the  form  of  eternity;  in  all  Nature  the  mind  is  the 
unique  embodiment  of  a  real  perpetuity  as  in  all 
Nature  personality  is  the  unique  exemplar  of  ideal 
anticipation  and  immortal  hope. 


IV.  TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


BeLOTTjTO's  ope^Ls  idTLV  ^  aXrjOeLa<;. 


— Plutarch 


I 


OF  all  the  myriad  idols  which  men  have  shaped 
them  of  their  imaginings  none  stands  forth 
so  austere,  so  august,  and  so  transcendently  elusive 
as  truth.  We  are  wont  to  think  of  the  human 
mind  as  demanding  in  the  objects  of  its  enthusiasms 
a  certain  concrete  vividness,  sense  and  emotion 
wrought  upon  in  unison.  And  indeed,  when  we 
contemplate  the  long  pageant  of  by-gone  worships, 
we  do  find  therein  sensuous  color  and  brilliancy; 
the  pantheons  of  the  nations,  the  symbols  of  cult 
and  creed,  are  the  ornate  illumination  of  the  scroll 
of  mental  history.  Nevertheless,  upon  reflection, 
we  perceive  clearly  that  the  showy  outward  appeals 
are  no  real  clue  to  the  enthusiasms  they  arouse. 
For  these  appeals  are  utterly  impermanent,  pantheon 
giving  way  to  pantheon,  symbol  to  symbol,  with 
kaleidoscopic  ease  of  mutation ;  but  the  motive  which 
yields  in  turn  to  the  sway  of  each,  the  zeal  and 
veneration  of  the  religious  spirit  ever  remains, 
unabated  and  unabashed  through  all  the  change. 
Surely  this  motive — able  to  withstand  so  oft-re¬ 
peated  overthrow  of  its  dearest  idols — must  spring 
from  an  instinct  deep-wrought  in  the  human  fibre; 
it  must  have  its  source  in  some  perennial  prepotency 
of  man’s  disposition  and  its  final  reason  in  the  laws 
of  life  and  mind — aye,  in  the  very  essence  of  that 


Truth 
an  idol 
of  the 
imagination 


78 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Truth 
presupposes 
faith  in 
truth 


Error  is 

simulated 

truth 


Nature  which  has  brought  into  being  life  and  mind. 

And  obviously  there  is,  through  all  the  change, 
a  constant  factor.  It  is  a  factor  without  which  the 
development  of  a  superbrute  intelligence  must  have 
been  forever  impossible,  for  it  is  the  key  and  sup¬ 
port  of  the  building  human  mind.  This  factor  is 
belief  in  truth.  And  I  mean  not  merely  belief  in 
the  truth  of  each  seeming  revelation  as  it  comes, — 
not  merely  sincerity  of  faith,  though  this  is  an  evi¬ 
dent  corollary.  But  what  humanizes  intelligence  is 
belief  in  the  worth  of  truth  for  its  own  sake;  it  is 
belief  in  true  thinking  as  the  only  possible  mental 
equipment  for  successful  living;  and  it  is  such  belief 
as  is  ready  at  any  time  to  reject  a  revelation  that 
fails  in  the  test  of  experience  and  to  resume  a  doubt¬ 
ing  and  troubled  search  for  that  fond  of  verity 
which,  however  unattained,  will  yet  never  suffer 
denial. 

The  strength  of  this  belief  may  be  estimated  from 
the  devotion  inspired  by  its  object.  Love  of  truth 
is  the  greatest,  as  it  is  the  least  conscious,  of  man’s 
passions.  Not  only  is  it  displayed  in  just  and  tem¬ 
perate  pursuit  of  knowledge,  but  often  in  blind  and 
bloody  defense  of  errors :  for  error  is  simulated 
truth  and  is  cherished  only  because  it  presents  itself 
in  truth’s  guise;  heretic  and  heretic-hunter  are  alike 
at  least  in  honest  zeal,  and  in  our  admiration  for 
the  noble  courage  of  a  Bruno,  preferring  death  to 
a  stain  upon  reason,  we  need  not  utterly  condemn 
in  his  opponents  the  grim  determination  that  their 
truth  must  prevail.  ‘‘The  soul,”  says  Plato,  “has  a 
faculty  of  loving  truth,  and  of  doing  all  things  for 
the  sake  of  it.”  In  the  history  of  the  world  it  would 
be  difficult  to  find  any  ideal  that  has  profoundly 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


79 


stirred  men's  minds  which  has  not  been  regarded  as 
a  special  and  superior  manifestation  of  truth :  Cru¬ 
sades,  Renaissance,  Reformation,  Enlightenment, 
each  betokens  a  new  and  exalted  devotion  to  belief, 
and  the  warring  and  proselytizing  of  sects  and 
creeds,  in  philosophy,  science  and  art  as  well  as 
religion,  are  but  recurrent  testimony  to  the  intensity 
of  earnestness  with  which  men  sacrifice  and  die  for 
their  convictions. 

Perhaps  the  extreme  type  of  this  devotion  is  to 
be  found  in  the  characteristically  modern  pursuit  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake,  in  that  purely  intel¬ 
lectual  zeal  which  is  the  apotheosis  of  curiosity. 
“La  gloire  et  la  curiosite  sont  les  fleaux  de  nostre 
ame,”  says  Montaigne;  “cette  cy  nous  conduict  a 
mettre  le  nez  par  tout;  et  celle  la  nous  deffend  de 

i  rien  laisser  irresolu  et  indecis.’’  Curiosity  is  at  root 

% 

[  a  utilitarian  affection  of  mind ;  for,  while  it  is  easy 
to  be  perilously  interested,  on  the  whole  an  inquisi- 
i  tive  prying  into  environment  is  the  condition  of 
!  healthy  caution  and  wise  adaptation.  In  the  primi¬ 
tive  stages  of  human  history,  where  experience  is 
all  concrete  and  the  problems  are  immediate  needs, 

I  acquisition  of  knowledge  is  perforce  mainly  inci¬ 
dental  to  impulse  and  appetite.  But  a  purely  specu¬ 
lative  interest  in  the  “hang’’  and  ^‘go”  of  things  is 
:  not  tardy  in  developing:  Bushmen  paintings  are 
more  than  highly  naturalistic  pleasurings  of  aesthetic 
I  fancy;  they  are  nature  studies  in  a  true  modern 
sense,  the  product  of  a  lively  impersonal  interest  in 
'  environment.  Now  it  is  just  the  mastering  of  the 
'  “hang”  and  ‘‘go”  of  the  world  that  makes  human 
living  so  exceptionally  efficient;  men  control  nature 
by  finding  out  her  hidden  catches  and  springs;  to 


Knowledge 
for  its 
own  sake 


The  “hang” 
and  “go” 
of  the 
world 


80 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  rational 
impulse 


Curiosity 


discover  general  rules  is  to  capitalize  experience  and 
live  on  its  income,  to  have  reserve  funds  in  time 
of  need.  And  herein  lies  the  grounding  in  the  laws 
of  life  for  the  development  of  such  a  mental  trait 
as  curiosity  and  such  a  function  of  mind  as  precise 
knowledge. 

But  the  conception  of  knowledge  as  a  mere  instru¬ 
ment,  as  a  condition  of  biologic  well-being  tending 
to  preservation  and  survival,  is  a  late  achievement 
of  reflection.  It  is  only  in  its  maturity  that  reason 
begins  to  understand  and  take  into  account  its  own 
motives  and  instincts; — indeed,  the  very  essence  of 
“instinct”  is  “rational  impulse”  with  the  “rational” 
element  suppressed  in  consciousness  for  the  econo¬ 
mizing  of  energy.  The  instinct  of  curiosity  is  no 
exception.  Hardly  yet  is  it  emerged  from  the  im¬ 
pulsive  stage;  and  we  may  view  that  type  of  mind 
in  which  it  is  at  once  most  impulsive  and  most 
powerfully  developed — the  scientific  mind,  the  mind 
eager  for  knowledge  for  the  sake  of  knowledge, — as 
an  extreme  specialization  of  mental  power  for  the 
good  of  the  race :  it  is  to  this  mind  that  we  owe  the 
profoundly  practical  and  efficient  body  of  knowledge 
which  is  coming  more  and  more  to  guide  sane  human 
endeavor  and  it  is  from  this  mind  that  we  derive 
that  degree  of  supremacy  over  physical  environment 
which  promises  to  bring  mankind  to  a  hale  and 
hearty  age.  In  its  elementary  phases  curiosity  is 
apt  to  be  intensely  practical;  its  concernments  are 
directly  at  hand;  it  answers  to  near  needs.  But  in 
order  that  mind  might  attain  a  truly  generalized 
dominion,  in  order  that  the  instrument  might  be 
rendered  efficient  beyond  the  purview  of  the  in¬ 
dividual,  so  that  the  system  of  science  should  be- 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


81 


come  a  racial  possession  and  benefit,  it  was  necessary 
that  there  should  arise  in  the  individual  an  in¬ 
stinctive  desire  for  knowledge  beyond  the  scope  of 
apparent  utility;  theoretic  interest  had  to  develop. 

Doubtless  if  we  could  foresee  the  whole  evolu¬ 
tion  of  our  species  we  should  discover  that  this 
theoretic  interest  does  as  a  matter  of  fact  lead  to 
purely  practical  results,  that  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  useless  science,  that  with  race  experience  as  the 
test  the  development  of  knowledge  is  conditioned 
by  limited  and  exacting  needs.  But  it  is  not  nature's 
way  to  dissipate  energies  in  her  chosen  tools :  im¬ 
pulse  sufficient  to  the  deed  is  all  that  she  vouch¬ 
safes;  and  so  we  do  as  a  matter  of  fact  find  sprung 
up  in  the  human  mind  an  acute  zeal  for  knowledge 
apart  from  any  recognized  utility,  and  correlative 
with  this,  in  the  sense  of  dignity  and  possession 
which  knowledge  gives,  an  inner  sanction  satisfying 
our  emotional  natures.  The  man  of  science  may 
permit  the  popular  journals  to  exploit  the  practical 
benefits  of  his  work  (for  from  showy  benefits  comes 
the  popular  willingness  to  support  his  researches), 
but  inwardly  he  feels  a  kind  of  impatience  with  such 
appeal ;  the  utility  of  his  work  is  felt  to  be  a  degrada¬ 
tion  of  the  finer  sanction,  viz.,  his  sense  of  dignity 
as  an  unbiased  seeker  after  truth :  in  his  hierarchy 
the  “pure"  sciences  are  immeasurably  exalted  above 
the  “applied,"  and  he  feels  a  certain  pain  when 
his  theoretic  investigations  result  in  some  practical 
good.  “And  the  beauty  of  it,  gentlemen,  the  beauty 
of  it  is  that  it  is  of  no  possible  use  to  any  one !" 
was  the  customary  exclamation  of  a  certain  mathe¬ 
matician  in  one  of  our  colleges,  when,  covered  with 
chalk  and  beaming  with  gratification,  he  emerged 


Practical 
value  of 
theoretic 
knowledge 


82 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  scientist 
satirized 


The  Scholas¬ 
tic  view  of 
science 


from  a  successful  demonstration  of  his  theorem. 

Such  is  perhaps  the  ideal  specialization  of  the 
scientific  disposition.  But  it  is  contrary  to  nature 
(and  to  definition)  that  any  human  being  should  be 
an  unalloyed  scientist :  there  is  always  some  spark 
— one  might  almost  say,  some  saving  grace — of 
human  interest  in  his  make-up;  a  degree  of  pity 
is  compelled  even  for  Mr.  Wells’s  humorously 
grotesque  Cavor  in  his  last  horror  at  finding  his 
mind  giving  way  at  the  bare  spectacle  of  the  in¬ 
sanely  sane  Selenites, — and  the  author  does  in  good 
sooth  show  us  the  reductio  ad  impossibile  of  the 
scientific  mood  in  his  monstrous  lunar  ants.  A 
development  of  this  kind  is  revolting  to  our  every 
sensibility;  and  just  because  it  is  the  inevitable  logic 
of  our  scientific  ideal,  it  enforces  upon  us  a  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  necessary  limitations  of  that  ideal, 
and  its  need  for  supplementation. 

As  a  rule  the  supplementation  comes  in  the  form 
of  some  ulterior  interest,  standing  above  the  con¬ 
creteness  of  scientific  problems  and  dominating  the 
whole  mental  life  and  attitude.  Except  in  the  most 
intellectual  periods  of  history  this  interest  has 
been  religious — a  reliance  upon  some  superhuman 
humanity  capable  of  justifying  every  devotion  to 
truth.  Such  is,  above  all,  the  attitude  of  scholasti¬ 
cism,  though  it  is  also  a  general  heritage  of  our 
mental  history.  Science  and  philosophy,  where  not 
consciously  practical,  are  made  ancillary  to  faith; 
the  justification  of  the  ways  of  God  to  man  is  the 
justification  of  reason;  and  a  kind  of  cosmic 
morality  is  made  the  sufficient  ground  of  being. 
But  in  certain  periods,  the  great  age  of  Athenian 
philosophy,  the  Renaissance,  and  especially  the 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


83 


Nineteenth  Century,  religion  itself  has  been  sub¬ 
jected  to  the  demand  for  justification;  and  the  con¬ 
ception  of  Truth  has  been  exalted  above  that  of  God 
or  of  the  Good. 

That  truth,  as  a  supreme  and  universal  ideal,  is 
capable  of  inspiring  men  to  a  veritable  fervor  of 
devotion,  is  the  lesson  of  many  a  biography.  There 
is  in  its  appeal  something  more  than  mere  intel¬ 
lectual  curiosity;  there  is  a  sacrificial  zeal  as  well, 
and  often  a  martyr-like  resignation  of  the  dearest 
of  human  hopes.  A  certain  abnegation  and  abase¬ 
ment  is  characteristic  of  the  modern  scientific  atti¬ 
tude;  it  owns  a  kind  of  shame  for  human  yearnings 
and  the  errancy  of  a  desire-driven  soul;  it  humbles 
itself  before  the  sense  of  its  own  attainment,  and 
seems  to  derive  a  melancholy  reverence  from  its 
contemplation  of  the  majestic  indifference  of  nature; 
with  heroic  fortitude  it  strives  to  quench  every  ris¬ 
ing  flicker  of  merely  human  animation,  and  with 
stoic  pride  struggles  to  convert  the  mind  into  an 
impassive  recorder  of  outward  being.  Its  faith  is 
the  most  unselfish  in  the  world — or,  if  it  have  any 
match,  the  cry  of  Job,  “Though  He  slay  me,  yet 
will  I  trust  Him,”  is  its  sole  parallel. 

But  the  unique  and  wonderful  feature  of  this 
devotion  is  not  so  much  its  abnegation  of  human 
passion  as  the  tremendous  abstractness  of  its  object. 
What  ordinarily  moves  men’s  love  or  reverence  is 
the  concrete  appeal  of  material  beauty  or  moral 
grandeur.  Truth,  as  an  ideal,  by  its  nature,  of 
course,  possesses  neither  of  these;  and  although  in 
most  systems  of  thought,  beauty  and  goodness  are 
made  truth’s  predicates,  this  is  but  concession  to 
the  humanness  of  the  systems’  framers;  indeed,  it 


Abnegation 
and  abase¬ 
ment  before 
the  majesty 
of  Nature 


84 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  True 
the  Good 
and  the 
Beautiful 


Devotion 
to  the 
abstract 


may  almost  be  said  that  the  difficulties  of  philosophy 
are  but  the  inherent  contradictoriness  of  this  trini¬ 
tarian  dogma  of  the  unity  of  the  true,  the  good 
and  the  beautiful.  By  itself  truth  lacks  moral  ana 
aesthetic  appeal;  and,  summing  in  itself  all  real  and 
possible  knowledge,  it  lacks,  too,  any  concrete  in¬ 
terest.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  derived  from  a  vast  num¬ 
ber  of  concrete  interests,  and  undoubtedly  the  fact 
that  it  holds  these  interests  in  implicit  reference  is 
what  gives  it  its  stable  hold  on  men.  But  these  im¬ 
plied  interests  do  not  in  the  least  explain  the  emo¬ 
tional  hold  of  the  general  conception:  their  nature, 
taken  severally,  is  as  practical  or  theoretical  prob¬ 
lems,  deriving  whatever  penumbras  of  emotion  they 
may  possess  from  appetitive  need  or  the  instinct  of 
curiosity;  and  there  is  no  incentive  to  martyrdom 
in  all  this.  Even  if  the  nature  of  the  universe  be 
the  implied  content  of  truth — as  for  the  enlightened 
mind  it  is — there  is  yet  no  explanation  of  the  emo¬ 
tional  hold  of  the  abstract  idea.  Men  undoubtedly 
are  stirred  in  imagination  by  their  inner  spectacle 
of  the  evolving  world,  but  this  is  obviously  an 
aesthetic  stimulation ;  and  in  any  case  it  cannot 
account  for  the  sharp  summoning  of  the  great  idea 
of  which  it  is  but  an  incidental  exposition.  For  the 
real  cause  of  devotion  to  truth  and  its  real  rationale 
in  human  nature,  we  must  inquire  beyond  any  mere 
play  of  feeling  and  imagery. 

II 

The  degree  of  abstractness  wherein  the  concep¬ 
tion  of  truth  is  still  capable  of  inspiring  devotion, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  clue  to  the  reason  for  this 
devotion,  are  indicated  in  the  celebrated  passage  of 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


85 


the  Phcedrus,  where,  in  the  one  phrase,  Plato  de¬ 
scribes  truth  as  “colorless,  formless,  intangible,”  and 
yet  as  “the  steersman  of  the  soul.”  Truth  is  the 
“steersman  of  the  soul” ;  truth  is  a  guide,  a  director, 
a  ruler  of  life;  truth  is  the  giver  of  human  freedom 
and  a  creator  of  human  destinies;  truth  is  at  once 
the  expression  of  man’s  achievement,  and  the  agent 
of  his  efficiency. 

It  is  the  tremendous  role  which  the  thinking  of 
truths  has  played  in  the  creation  of  man’s  humanity, 
the  liberation  of  psychical  life  from  its  lock-step 
dependence  upon  the  whip  and  spur  of  ever-varying 
sensation,  it  is  this  deed  which  has  inwrought  in 
man’s  mind  his  instinctive  veneration  for  the  ideal 
of  knowledge.  Truth  is  the  steersman  of  the  soul, 
and  in  a  very  near  sense;  for  the  body  of  our  knowl¬ 
edge  is  the  chart  whereby  we  direct  the  course  of 
life,  and  so  determine  the  soul’s  development. 

The  emergence  of  a  human  from  the  multitude 
of  brute  species  is  the  most  wonderful  fact  of  bio¬ 
logical  history;  and  the  wonder  of  it  lies  almost 
solely  in  the  appearance  of  that  power  of  thought, 
the  power  of  forming  generalizations,  general  con¬ 
ceptions,  which  is  distinctive  of  man.  Man’s  hu¬ 
manness  rests  its  case  on  the  fact  of  his  human 
mind.  What  is  above  all  peculiar  to  that  mind  is 
its  foresight;  its  faculty  of  abstracting  the  fixed  and 
constant  elements  from  the  general  evanescence  of 
experience,  and,  by  service  of  such  abstractions,  its 
power  to  predict  the  future.  Prediction,  foresight, 
enables  preparation,  preparation  makes  possible  the 
realization  of  ideals. 

To  be  sure  in  the  lower  animals,  nature  to  a 
degree  makes  good  the  lack  of  rational  foresight. 


Truth  the 
“steersman 
of  the  soul” 


Mind  means 
foresight 


7 


86 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Instinct 

and 

Conception 


Defects 
of  instinct 


Instinct  is  her  agency,  and  in  general  we  may  say 
that,  in  the  long  development  of  mind,  conscious¬ 
ness  acquires  stability  and  efficiency  in  two  modes 
or  forms,  instinct  and  conception.  Both  of  these 
come  as  generalizations  of  race  experience,  enforced 
and  ingrained  by  the  harsh  contacts  of  unyielding 
environments,  and  both  are  means  of  surmounting 
the  transiency  of  the  moment-to-moment  life.  In¬ 
stinct  is  the  more  primitive  and  essential.  It  is  also 
the  more  narrow,  condensed  and  specialized.  Bound 
close  to  the  preservative  and  perpetuative  activities, 
and  so  restricted  by  the  peculiar  forms  and  needs  of 
the  organism,  it  lacks  adaptability  and  elasticity. 
Nevertheless,  it  represents  a  vast  advance  over  the 
fickleness  of  consciousness  confined  to  fleeting  sen¬ 
sation  and  whim.  An  instinct  is  a  kind  of  uni¬ 
versal;  it  is  a  sign  of  a  recurrent  experience,  its 
relative  simplicity  representing  the  multitude  of  de¬ 
tails  which  the  repetitions  embrace.  It  is  a  race 
generalization,  fixed  only  after  myriad  efforts  and  at 
a  cost  of  myriad  failures,  and  already  it  reveals  glim¬ 
merings  of  prevision :  the  honey-maker  stakes  pres¬ 
ent  toil  for  future  joyance,  the  sentinel  of  the  herd 
exchanges  present  gratification  for  future  safety. 

Instinct,  then,  evinces  two  of  the  characteristics 
of  conception,  universality  and  prevision.  But  it 
lacks  the  characteristic  which  must  be  added  to  make 
reason  possible,  mobility,  the  power  to  form  varied 
and  new  combinations  to  suit  varied  and  new  situa¬ 
tions.  It  lacks,  in  short,  the  power  to  represent  the 
novel  and  to  create  the  ideal.  It  is  anchored  so 
snugly  to  the  concrete  case  that  abstraction  is  im¬ 
possible,  and  without  abstraction  there  can  be  no 
freedom,  no  ideality. 


1 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


87 


Thus,  the  hugeness  of  the  gap  separating  man  as 
the  reasoning  animal  from  the  rest  of  brute  creation 
is  warranted  by  the  nature  of  reason  itself ;  for 
between  instinct  and  reason  is  all  the  difference  be¬ 
tween  blindness  and  seeing,  between  servile  sub¬ 
jection  to  ephemeral  events  and  spiritual  freedom 
in  the  realm  of  ideas.  It  is  the  nature  of  concep¬ 
tion  to  represent  to  the  mind  that  which  is  not 
present  in  sense;  it  is  the  nature  of  reason  to  com¬ 
bine  conceptions  to  likenesses  and  uses  not  yet  real¬ 
ized  in  experience.  In  this  nature  of  reason  is 
founded  human  freedom, — first  realized  in  that 
mastery  over  nature  which  has  enabled  man  to  con¬ 
quer  the  antagonisms  of  physical  circumstance  and 
adapt,  not  himself  to  environment,  but  environment 
to  his  own  need  and  profit,  so  that  he,  alone  of 
animals,  is  immutably  himself  in  whatever  zone  or 
clime. 

But  of  vastly  more  consequence  than  this  physical 
mastery,  is  the  spiritual  independence  which  reason 
wins  for  him.  The  sole  instrument  and  enablement 
of  reason  is  the  conception  or  idea.  Reality  is  fixed 
in  the  matrix  of  time,  forming  an  unalterably  con¬ 
crete  series  of  haps  and  events  no  one  of  which  may 
beg  or  borrow  added  period;  gone,  each  is  gone 
forever.  But  it  is  not  so  with  ideas.  It  is  their 
character  and  essence  to  bridge  and  conquer  time. 
Their  truth  is  the  experience  of  yesterday  and  the 
prophecy  of  tomorrow.  They  serve,  indeed,  to 
create  yesterday  and  tomorrow,  for  it  is  by  dint  of 
ideas  alone  that  the  reach  of  life  is  expanded  beyond 
the  mere  immediacy  of  appetitive  existence.  Ab¬ 
stracting  from  the  passing  flow  of  events  what  is 
typically  and  reiterantly  significant,  they  lock  these 


Reason 


Spiritual 

independ¬ 

ence 


88 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Universal 

ideas 


Evolution 
of  mind 


significances  together  in  the  form  of  universals, 
which  are  the  counters  of  intellectual  life  and  the 
foundation  of  all  intelligent  experience.  Valid  yes¬ 
terday,  today,  and  tomorrow,  universal  ideas  form 
the  truth, — the  talisman  opening  the  portals  of  all 
knowledge  and  giving  consistency  and  worth  to  all 
enduring  personality.  Nor  has  the  human  mind 
been  dull  to  their  meaning,  but  from  the  very  first 
it  has  beheld  in  them  its  divinities. 

Ill 

The  human  mind  has  evolved.  It  has  not  sprung 
in  fullness  of  strength  and  glory  from  the  being  of 
creative  nature.  Only  through  long  generations, 
the  long  years  of  man’s  history  and  the  vastly  longer 
ages  of  his  prehistory,  has  it  gradually  and  pain¬ 
fully  come  to  its  own.  The  motive  of  this  evolu¬ 
tion  is  significant  of  the  final  meaning  of  intelli¬ 
gence.  As  we  survey  the  mind’s  growth,  we  see 
that  the  process  has  been  one  of  slow  breaking  away 
from  the  thralldom  of  sense. 

To  think — to  form  abstractions,  to  classify  facts, 
to  organize  knowledge — is  no  light  or  easy  achieve¬ 
ment.  The  animal  mind,  even  at  its  highest,  in  the 
apes,  we  believe  to  be  absolutely  dependent  upon 
the  sensations  and  perceptions  of  the  moment. 
There  may  be  animals  capable  of  a  very  dim  fore¬ 
sight,  but  at  the  best  their  reach  of  thought  cannot 
extend  beyond  a  few  hours’  duration,  and  the  con¬ 
tent  of  their  thought  can  never  transcend  the  par¬ 
ticular.  It  is  the  perception  or  feeling  of  the 
moment,  in  all  its  concrete  vividness,  that  absorbs 
consciousness;  the  present  hunger  or  the  present 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


89 


grateful  satiety,  the  present  bodily  zest  or  the  pres¬ 
ent  drowsiness,  these  are  meter  and  guide  of  the 
conscious  life. 

Now  the  primitive  human  mind — at  its  lowest-— 
is  advanced  far  beyond  this  stage.  There  are  no 
men  incapable  of  thinking  the  lapse  of  days  and 
nights  with  the  concurrent  duration  of  things — no 
men,  perhaps  incapable  of  thinking  time  in  those 
greater  measures  set  by  the  phases  of  the  moon  or 
the  annual  recurrence  of  the  seasons.  And  these 
standards,  be  it  noted,  are  objective;  they  are  no 
mere  appetitive  change,  but  observed  alternations  in 
nature.  Further,  they  are  observed  as  recurrences — 
the  terms  day,  night,  moon,  winter,  mean  not  merely 
the  experience  of  light  and  hunger  of  this  day,  the 
gloom  and  drowsiness  of  this  night,  the  waning  of 
this  moon,  the  dolor  of  this  season  of  snow,  but  they 
mean  the  constantly  repeated  like  experiences  in 
a  man’s  life,  days  and  winters  past  and  to  be.  In 
other  words,  they  are  terms  expressive  of  generali¬ 
zations;  they  are  terms  by  means  of  which  man 
universalizes  his  knowledge;  they  are  mental  signs 
of  truths  of  experience. 

The  progress  of  the  human  mind  in  its  slow 
emancipation  from  the  domination  of  sense  is  con¬ 
spicuously  shown  in  the  emergence,  in  the  history 
of  thought,  of  the  great  principles  of  reason.  At 
the  very  basis  of  nature’s  intelligibility  lies  the  prin¬ 
ciple  known  to  logic  as  the  principle  of  identity.  On 
this  is  based  all  our  classificatory  science,  all  our 
generalizations,  all  our  abstract  thinking,  in  fact  all 
of  that  system  which  we  interject  into  reality  by 
means  of  language;  for  every  word,  every  name, 
denotes  some  special  aspect  of  nature,  which  is  sub- 


Sense  of 
duration 


Principle 
of  identity 


Nature 
knows  no 
likenesses 


90  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE  i 

ject  to  repetition.  It  is  because  two  things  or  events 
are  alike  that  we  are  able  to  designate  them  by  the 
one  word.  Similarities,  likenesses,  are  the  keys  to  ! 

our  intellectual  mastery  of  what  Kant  calls  the 
'‘blind  play,”  the  "rhapsody,”  of  undifferentiated  ] 

sensation.  ; 

1 

Now  similarity  or  likeness  is  purely  an  ideal  rela-  | 

tion.  It  pertains  to  an  apprehending  mind,  not  to 
the  bare  fact  of  reality.  Similarity  implies  an  act 
of  comparison,  a  measurement  of  one  thing  against 
another;  an  act  which  can  be  function  of  mind  only. 

There  are  no  likenesses  in  nature;  likeness  is  not  a 
quality  of  a  thing  or  things,  but  a  relation,  estab¬ 
lished  by  mind,  between  things.  And  recognition  i 

of  likenesses,  identities,  is  the  first. great  step  to  the 
conceptual  mastery  of  nature.  It  is  the  beginning 
of  the  formation  of  that  map,  that  mental  diagram 
or  scheme  of  things,  which  constitutes  our  notion  of 
the  world,  and  so  constitutes  our  ideal  of  truth. 

What  it  cost  the  human  mind  to  attain  this  power 
of  generalization  through  observation  of  similar¬ 
ities,  is  impressively  shown  by  the  long  and  painful 
mental  effort  through  which  freedom  in  the  world 
of  ideas  has  been  won.  Through  many,  many 
generations,  through  many,  many  centuries,  man 
thought,  as  most  men  still  think,  only  in  concrete 
images.  Myth,  fable,  allegory,  were  the  normal 
and  necessary  vehicles  of  abstract  ideas.  A  new 
abstraction  formed,  wrought  as  on  an  anvil  in  the 
white  heat  of  experience,  glowed  with  the  hue  and 
flare  of  embodied  life,  and  so  was  heralded  to  the 
mind  as  a  new  deity  in  its  great  pantheon  of  ideas. 

The  count  of  every  primitive  religion  reveals  its 
quota  of  hypostatized  ideas :  the  Hindu  Dharnia, 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


91 


the  divine  Law,  comparable  to  the  Logos  of  Greek 
and  Christian  thought;  the  Greek  Charis,  Themis, 
Nemesis;  the  Roman  Justitia,  Tides,  Bellona;  the 
Norse  Frith  and  Blith.  Most  of  these  originated 
as  attributes  of  some  more  primitive  deity — a  nature 
deity,  as  these  are  deities  of  society — the  attribute 
being  first  personified  as  a  special  incarnation  of 
this  deity,  and  then,  thanks  to  the  mental  clutch 
which  personification  gives,  thrown  off  as  indepen¬ 
dent  members  of  the  divine  council.  Thus  Zeus  is 
father  of  Dike,  Justice;  Athena  Nikephoros,  the 
bearer  of  victory,  is  transformed  into  Nike,  the 
Winged  Victory  herself. 

But  the  nature  gods  themselves  illustrate  the  same 
development.  They  merely  belong  to  an  earlier 
stratum  of  abstractive  thought.  Zeus  is  the  shin¬ 
ing  heavens,  summarizing  the  light  and  orderliness 
of  the  world  above;  Demeter  is  the  earth  beneath, 
and  Kore,  her  daughter,  is  the  symbol  of  the  vege¬ 
tation  of  recurring  years.  These  gods  are  ab¬ 
stractions  of  man’s  experience  of  elemental  nature, 
forged  as  it  were  by  Nature  herself  in  his  growing 
mind,  to  enable  him  to  overleap  the  narrow  bound¬ 
aries  of  the  moment  and  master  days  and  seasons 
to  come. 

It  is  many  generations  beyond  the  mythic  stage 
of  thought — a  stage  we  have  not  yet  wholly  out¬ 
grown — that  the  thinkers  of  our  race  begin  to  realize 
the  true  meaning  of  abstract  thinking:  how  it  is  the 
functional  rather  than  the  material  element  that  is 
significant  for  human  life;  that  truth  is  measured 
by  what  mastery  of  natural  destiny  truth  yields. 

The  primitive  organization  of  nature  under  mythic 
forms  gives  place  to  the  conception  of  a  universe 


Hypostasis 
in  myth 


The  gods 


Pragmatic 

test 


92 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Law  and 
order 


Truth 
and  fact 


governed  by  law  and  order.  But  what  is  this  law 
and  order  ?  In  reality,  it  is  only  a  new  mythology, 
a  new  truth.  It  serves  our  purpose  better  than  the 
old;  its  basis  is  a  greater  range  and  duration  of 
human  experience.  But  its  basis  is  nevertheless 
nought  but  human  experience,  and  human  expe¬ 
rience  taken  in  its  unreal,  in  its  ideal,  intention. 
Scientific  law  is  scientific  truth.  This  is  not  to  say 
that  it  is  fact.  It  is  a  certain  statement  of  fact, — 
fact  generalized.  It  has  correspondence  with  fact. 
But  the  correspondence  is  relative  to  signification, 
to  the  respect  in  which  the  facts  are  considered, 
hence  to  human  intelligence  and  purpose. 

Let  us  briefly  consider  this  relationship  of  truth 
and  fact. 

We  cannot  ask  of  a  fact  if  it  be  true,  when  we 
mean  by  “fact”  the  actual  flow  of  phenomena  in 
world  history;  a  fact  cannot  be  other  than  status 
or  locus  in  the  general  course  of  events;  fact  is 
reality  itself ;  and  it  would  be  meaningless  to  speak 
of  reality  as  true  or  false.  But  ideas  symbolize 
facts,  and  according  as  that  symbolism  is  efficient 
or  inefficient,  we  term  them  true  or  false.  To  be 
sure,  ideas  may  exist  as  psychical  events  without 
being  either  true  or  false;  they  may  be  neutral  so 
long  as  they  are  not  predicated  of  anything;  but  this 
is  considering  them  apart  from  a  thinking  process, 
and  it  is  doubtful  if  any  idea  is  ever  entertained 
apart  from  some  possible  judgment.  And  the  faint¬ 
est  suggestion  of  use  in  judgment  is  a  degree  of 
truth-or-error  already  entered  into  the  idea.  An 
idea  which  is  a  possibility  is  tinged  with  truth; 
it  points  to  some  reality  of  which  it  is  the  truth 
and  it  begins  to  shape  itself  to  the  system  or 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


93 


context  in  which  that  reality  is  conceived  as  existent. 

Manifestly,  the  only  employment  of  ideas  is  as 
truth  or  falsehood;  they  are  suggested  predicates 
or  they  are  mental  lumber.  But  this  is  not  saying 
that  there  is  but  one  species  of  truth  or  falsehood 
open  to  them.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  myriao 
such;  as  many  as  we  have  worlds  abuilding, — and 
the  ordinary  mind  has  a  considerable  number  of 
these  worlds,  each  formed  of  a  group  of  concepts 
united  by  some  center  of  interest,  to  some  particular 
purpose, — and  each,  at  least  ostensibly,  unrelated  to 
its  mates.  Thus,  we  have  the  world  of  reality  in 
numerous  fairly  disjunct  aspects:  as  a  world  of 
every-day  contacts,  the  limited  one-man  reality;  as 
a  world  of  social  ideals,  the  communal  world;  as  a 
world  of  beauty  and  ugliness;  as  a  world  of  philo¬ 
sophical  or  scientific  speculation,  a  cosmos;  and  we 
have  besides  as  many  fictive  or  romantic  worlds  as 
there  are  fictions  or  romances.  The  same  ideas  are 
judged  true  or  false  in  these  various  worlds  only 
in  analogous  senses ;  and  as  each  world  has  its  own 
governing  conception,  ideas  enter  in  or  are  rejected 
in  utterly  different  proportion.  In  each  case  the 
candidate  for  truth-positing  is  tested  for  its  ability 
to  fit  into  and  bind  together  the  general  system  of 
which  it  is  to  form  a  part,  and  while  it  necessarily 
modifies  the  conceptual  whole  to  some  extent,  it  is 
itself  reacted  upon  by  the  sheers  and  strains  of  the 
total  structure. 

The  scientific  world  of  law  and  order  no  less  than 
the  mythic  world  of  the  wills  of  the  gods  is  thus 
a  creation  of  a  point  of  view;  it  is  a  regard  in  which 
things  are  considered.  As  a  system  it  stands  out 
against  nature,  as  a  sort  of  key  to  nature;  and  it 


The  variety 
of  our 
worlds 


The  world 
of  science 


94 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  concept 
of  ether 


Actio 
in  distans 


is  by  no  means,  as  we  are  too  wont  to  think,  em¬ 
bodied  in  the  being  of  reality.  There  is  a  great 
fission  between  thought  and  things,  the  one  having 
its  order  in  a  hierarchy  of  ideal  relationships,  the 
other  in  the  historic  flow  of  events  known  to  us  only 
in  sense-perception. 

IV 

Perhaps  I  can  bring  home  this  ideal  and  relative 
character  of  scientific  truth  by  illustration. 

An  interesting  instance  of  that  broadening  of 
human  powers  of  conception  which  I  have  been 
stating,  centers  about  the  notion  of  ether.  The  idea 
of  ether  doubtless  originates  with  the  mythic  con¬ 
ception  of  the  blue  sky  as  the  abode  or  embodiment 
of  divinity, — Zeus  is  the  ^ther,  with  ^schylus. 
And  thence  it  passed  into  science  through  Aristotle’s 
notion  of  it  as  the  substance  of  the  higher  empyrean, 
the  realm  of  stars. 

But  its  significance  for  modern  physics  dates 
mainly  from  the  objection  of  Leibnitz  to  Newton’s 
theory  of  gravitation,  that  action  at  a  distance  is 
impossible  and  inconceivable.  To  meet  the  objec¬ 
tion,  ether,  or  an  etheric  fluid,  was  postulated  as  a 
medium  for  action  by  contact,  that  is,  as  a  medium 
for  the  conveyance  of  gravitational  forces.  Today 
the  reverse  of  Leibnitz’s  view  is  the  more  tenable. 
Lotze  has  shown  that  action  by  contact  is,  if  any¬ 
thing,  less  conceivable  than  action  at  a  distance,  and 
indeed  action  at  a  distance  is  essential  to  the  concep¬ 
tion  of  force  itself,  and  of  gravitation.  For  gravi¬ 
tation  is  nothing  more  than  the  expression  of  a 
relation  between  two  bodies  separated  in  space. 
Simply  stated,  it  is  the  rule  that  the  acceleration  of 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


95 


each  of  the  bodies  is  proportional  to  the  mass  of 
the  other,  while  the  attractive  force  or  tendency  is 
inversely  as  the  square  of  the  distance.  The  word 
“force,”  as  applied  to  gravitation,  means  only  a  ten¬ 
dency  to  motion  of  a  certain  sort  under  certain  con¬ 
ditions  ;  and  it  is  affirmed  that  this  is  universal.  But 
under  certain  ideal  conditions  it  could  not  be  uni¬ 
versal.  For  the  force  of  gravitation  is  purely  an 
attractive  force,  that  is,  it  is  a  tendency  of  motion 
of  bodies  toward  one  another.  Now  if  it  be  con¬ 
ceived  that  this  force  is  the  only  one  in  existence  and 
further  that  it  is  operative  only  in  the  particles 
(mere  centers  of  this  force)  composing  the  earth, 
then  there  would  be  one  irresistible  and  ever 
accelerating  tendency  of  all  these  particles  toward 
the  earth’s  center  of  gravity,  involving  the  ultimate 
shrinking  of  the  globe  to  a  mere  punctual  nothing¬ 
ness.  The  same  mishap  would  occur,  under  like 
supposition,  to  a  finite  universe. 

Of  course  such  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  gravi¬ 
tation  is  too  far  from  the  facts  of  reality  to  be 
more  than  idle  speculation;  there  are  repulsions  as 
well  as  attractions  to  be  taken  into  account;  but 
at  least  it  serves  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  human 
theories  are  built  upon  too  narrow  a  range  of  phe¬ 
nomena,  hold  true  of  too  limited  a  sphere  of  reality, 
to  serve  as  a  foundation  for  the  prediction  of  cosmic 
destinies.  Even  in  our  own  solar  system  it  is  not 
certain  that  gravitational  attraction  does  not  exceed 
the  ratio  expressed  by  the  law,  though  by  an  in¬ 
finitesimal  fraction,  as  the  sun  is  neared."" 


Gravitation 
as  a  force 


Relativity 


1  The  recent  physical  theory  of  Relativity  is  but  a  new  illustration 
of  the  fact  that  scientific  laws  are  hypotheses  of  description  within 
limited  and  chosen  cantons  of  experience. 


96 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Physics 
not  a 
science 
of  causes 


Nor  its  laws 
a  narrative 
of  creation 


In  emphasizing  the  limitation  of  scientific  theory, 
scientific  achievement  is  in  no  wise  being  brought 
into  question.  What  is  essential  to  be  understood 
is  that  scientific  thought  is  today  in  rapid  evolution 
and  that  scientific  knowledge  is  at  best  only  an 
account  of  restricted  fields  of  reality.  A  generation 
ago  Mill  held  that  the  whole  inquiry  of  natural 
science  is  for  causes  of  phenomena;  today  physicists 
assert  that  the  notion  of  cause  has  no  place  in  their 
science  at  least.  Time,  space,  mass  are  the  cate¬ 
gories  under  which  physical  phenomena  may  be  con¬ 
ceived.  Is  it  for  a  moment  to  be  supposed  that  these 
can  give  an  adequate  account  of  this  rich  and  varied 
world  in  which  we  dwell?  The  whole  region  of 
growth,  vitality,  consciousness,  the  visible,  tangible, 
audible  dimensions  of  creation,  are  yet  to  be  taken 
into  account. 

For  a  quarter  of  a  century  philosophers  have  been 
examining  and  analyzing  scientific  conceptions  with 
an  assiduousness  and  interest  proportional  to  the 
immense  significance  of  their  metaphysical  bearings. 
The  result  of  this  investigation  has  been  singularly 
unanimous.  The  body  of  scientific  law  is  con¬ 
ceded  to  be  a  powerful  instrument  of  knowledge, 
a  veritable  calculus  of  reality,  but  in  no  sense  a 
photographic  reproduction  of  reality;  it  is  a  mne¬ 
monic  device  for  the  assemblage  of  facts  useful  or 
calculable;  it  is  not  a  narrative  of  creation.  In  con¬ 
sequence  of  this  view,  materialism, — the  conception 
of  the  universe  as  an  atomistic  machine, — has  been 
utterly  discarded.  It  answers  not  the  least  demands 
of  reason,  accounts  not  for  the  most  patent  facts. 
In  its  place,  idealism,  in  some  form  or  other,  holds 
general  sway;  and  it  is  safe  to  assert  that  the  doc- 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


97 


trine  of  evolution  with  its  attendant  theories,  has 
served  no  end  more  certainly  than  that  of  compel¬ 
ling  the  philosophic  conclusion  that  purposive  intel¬ 
ligence  is  the  chief  fact,  the  Leitmotiv  of  the  uni¬ 
verse. 

Of  course  the  philosopher,  too,  frames  his  opinion 
upon  the  meager  basis  of  human  experience.  There 
is  a  temerity  periling  effrontery  in  any  effort  to 
infer  the  whence  and  whither  of  the  cosmos  from 
a  span  of  experience  at  its  utmost  covering  less  than 
ten  thousand  recorded  years,  and  in  its  free  intelli¬ 
gence  only  a  fraction  of  that  time.  But  the  phi- 
:  losopher  at  least  has  in  his  favor  that  he  judges  in 
I  accordance  with  instincts  to  which  nature  has  in- 
I  dubitably  given  rise;  he  recognizes  and  considers 
j  those  human  values  which  for  us  are  alone  sig- 
i  nificant. 


V 

Protagoras  began  his  treatise  on  truth,  ‘‘Man  is 
the  measure  of  all  things.”  The  history  of  the 
growth  of  knowledge  since  his  day  but  emphasizes 
the  certainty  of  this  aphorism.  With  Plato  and 
Aristotle  it  received  a  Socratic  tinge, — “the  good 
man  is  the  measure  of  all,”  as  Aristotle  phrases  it; 
and  this  was  proper,  for  it  was  no  more  than  the 
necessary  recognition  of  that  moral  element  in  the 
world  which  makes  human  living  possible.  Yet  it 
has  proven  unfortunate  for  subsequent  thought  that 
the  good  man,  with  both  Plato  and  Aristotle,  proved 
to  be  a  character  purely  intellectual ;  apparently  these 
philosophers  find  the  height  of  goodness  in  a  specu¬ 
lative  mood, — and  hence  has  sprung  that  fearful 
dichotomy  of  intellect  and  intellectible  which  has 


The 

Whence 
and  the 
Whither 


Intellect 

and 

intellectible 


98 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Dark 

from  excess 
of  light 


ThecFtetus 

179c 


Experience 

means 

nature 


ever  since  been  the  amazement  and  despair  of  think¬ 
ing  men:  on  the  one  hand,  transcendent  Nature;  on 
the  other,  hugely  transcended,  finite  Man. 

“The  philosopher,’'  remarks  the  Stranger,  in  the 
Thecctetiis,  “always  holding  converse  through  reason 
with  the  idea  of  being,  is  dark  from  excess  of  light.” 
The  philosopher,  in  other  words,  dealing  only  with 
statistics  (for  our  general  ideas  are  naught  if  not 
statistical),  misses  the  reality.  Plato  is  perhaps 
realizing  his  own  danger;  for  it  is  the  dialectical 
philosopher  who  most  errs  through  excess  of  rea¬ 
son’s  light — the  philosopher  who,  while  he  fearingly 
mistrusts  his  perceptions  and  feelings,  yet  regards 
his  reason  as  securely  free  from  the  idiosyncracies 
of  his  personal  experience.  In  a  passage  where  he 
is  refuting  the  saying  of  Protagoras — or  his  own 
misconception  of  it, — Plato  makes  Socrates  to  say: 

There  are  many  ways,  Theodorus,  in  which  the  doctrine  that 
every  opinion  of  man  is  true  may  be  refuted ;  but  there  is  more 
difficulty  in  proving  that  states  of  feeling,  which  are  present  to 
a  man,  and  out  of  which  arise  sensations  and  opinions  in  ac¬ 
cordance  with  them,  are  also  untrue. 

And  this  is  the  very  crux :  there  are  many  ways  of 
manipulating  ideas,  but  experience  manipulates  it¬ 
self,  and  impresses  its  own  beliefs  upon  the  soul. 
Experience,  if  it  mean  anything,  means  nature;  and 
these  Nature-impressed  beliefs  are  bound  to  be  our 
only  cue  to  truth — which  will  be  solid  in  proportion 
as  it  assimilates  and  accounts  for  them.  “Truths 
confirmable  by  sense  and  secular  observation,”  re¬ 
marks  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  “seems  to  me  the  surest 
path  to  trace  the  labyrinth  of  Truth.” 

There  are  two  general  modes  in  which  men  take 
thought  about  Nature.  There  is,  first,  the  analytic 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


99 


mode.  Prompted  by  curiosity — be  it  casual  or  tem¬ 
peramental — your  man  of  mind  comes  to  a  halt  in 
the  course  of  living  long  enough  to  dissect  and  ex¬ 
amine  the  experience  of  living;  and  so  becomes  a 
thinker.  If  zest  of  thought  lead  him  no  farther  than 
this,  if  he  remain  content  to  examine,  dissect,  analyze, 
then  his  thinking  is  all  in  the  temper  we  have  come 
to  call  scientific.  But  if  his  interest  be  more  than 
merely  curious,  if  he  be  moved  by  personal  and  self- 
conscious  motives,  above  all  by  concern  for  his 
mind’s  relation  to  the  course  of  his  living,  then  his 
thought  passes  from  the  analytic  into  the  explana- 
I  tory  mode;  from  science  he  proceeds  to  philosophy. 

Analysis  of  Nature  has  as  its  object  one  simple 
;  end,  her  intelligibility.  Its  motive  is  a  purely  intel- 
i  lectual  passion — curiosity;  its  end  is  a  purely  intel- 
!  lectual  satisfaction — truth.  Explanation,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  complex.  Its  motives  are  as  many  as 
j  there  are  phases  to  human  personality;  its  ends  are 
\  as  various  as  are  human  desires.  It  must  satisfy  not 
only  the  appetite  of  the  intelligence,  but  as  well  the 
J  thousand  and  one  named  and  nameless  appetites 
I  which  along  with  this  make  up  the  whole  of  living. 
I  And  these  appetites  (desires,  conations,  volitions, 
i  aspirations,  idealizations) — these  appetites  are  the 
\  agencies  which  define  our  “interests”  in  the  world, 
I  and  hence,  in  the  run  of  life,  determine  our  selec- 

t  Hons  of  truth.  Man  cannot  be  merely  nor  can  he  be 

i  ubiquitously  curious;  no  man  can  be  merely  any 
f  more  than  he  can  be  ubiquitously  a  scientist;  action 
I  and  passion,  along  with  thought,  are  parcel  of  life. 
I  Truths  are  too  many  for  one  attention  or  one  ex- 
f  perience;  and  every  life  and  every  life’s  ideals  are 
(  patterned  upon  what  truths  its  interests  find  signifi- 


Analysis 

and 

explanation 


Our 

interests 
determine 
our  truths 


100 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Intelligence 

and 

Imagination 


Spencer’s 

criterion 


cant;  so  that  what  we  call  Truth,  in  general,  is  the 
world’s  response  to  our  selective  interests;  it  is  a 
creed  of  living,  expressing  the  degree  of  Nature’s 
complaisance  to  our  wish. 

This,  as  I  understand  it,  is  the  pragmatic  notion 
of  truth.  With  it,  I  have  no  quarrel, — only  I  think 
that  it  needs  supplementation.  Our  measure  of  the 
world  is  human  science;  and  the  measure  of  science 
is  human  intelligence;  but  intelligence  itself  is  meted 
out  by  Nature  and  only  humanized  by  the  power  of 
imagination.  It  is  a  gift  of  Nature,  through  imagi¬ 
nation;  and  so  may  be  regarded  as  a  reflection  in 
the  creature  of  his  creator — in  so  far  as  that  creator 
is  human.  Hozv  far  that  may  be  we  have  no  means 
of  telling,  to  my  way  of  thinking;  it  is  only  your 
Absolute  idealist  who  can  project  the  figure  of  hu¬ 
man  nature  into  the  whole  of  Nature. 

When  I  say  that  intelligence  is  dependent  upon 
imagination,  I  understand  imagination  to  represent 
in  us  the  inward  and,  for  man,  the  essential  embodi¬ 
ment  of  Nature’s  creative  power.  Imagination  is 
not  alone  the  solace  of  life;  it  is  also,  and  above  all 
else,  the  faculty  which  has  lifted  man  above  the  time¬ 
serving  brute,  making  possible  his  insight  into  the 
natural  history  of  what  lies  behind  the  screen  of  sen¬ 
sation.  Imagination  is  the  power  whereby  we  dis¬ 
cover  truth;  it  is  the  instrument  by  means  of  which 
we  rear  the  wonderful  structure  of  human  knowl¬ 
edge,  our  parable  of  reality.  Its  potency  measures 
possible  science;  its  flexibility  determines  mental 
evolution.  According  to  Herbert  Spencer,  conceiva- 
bility,  or  as  he  puts  it,  the  inconceivableness  of  the 
negative,  is  our  final  criterion  of  truth.  Upon  the 
mind’s  power  to  abstract  and  relate  phenomena 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


101 


science  is  dependent,  and  with  this  power  science  is 
limited.  John  Stuart  Mill,  in  comment,  pointed  out  Mill’s 
that  human  power  of  conception  is  not  a  static  thing, 
that  it  expands  from  generation  to  generation, — 
the  antipodes,  inconceivable  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
are  accepted  as  commonplace  in  the  sixteenth, — and 
by  reason  of  this  expansion,  continually  broadens  the 
mind’s  horizon,  continually  throws  back  the  border¬ 
line  of  possibility.  On  the  one  hand  is  human  impo¬ 
tence,  the  mind’s  abashment  in  the  presence  of  the 
unknown ;  on  the  other  there  is  an  energy  of  growth 
ever  straining  the  leash  of  mortal  circumstance. 

It  is  the  failure  to  recognize  this  generative  force 
in  reason  which  lies  at  the  source  of  most  objections 
to  the  homo  mensiira  doctrine.  Truth  is  conceived 
as  changeless  and  fixed;  not  as  fluid  and  growing. 
Montaigne  has  an  essay  on  the  thesis,  cest  folie  de 
rapporter  le  way  et  le  faulx  an  jugement  de  nostre  Montaigne 
siiffisance,  in  which  he  says :  “Reason  teaches  me 
that  resolvedly  to  pronounce  a  thing  false  and  im¬ 
possible  is  to  assume  the  chance  of  having  in  one’s 
head  the  bornes  and  limits  of  the  will  of  God  and  of 
the  power  of  our  Mother  Nature;  and  there  is  no 
more  notable  folly  in  the  world  than  to  reduce  these 
to  the  measure  of  our  capacity  and  our  sufficiency.” 

And  again :  “It  is  a  temerarious  presumption,  this 
of  knowing  how  far  extends  possibility!”  These 
sayings  are  perfectly  valid;  and  it  is  only  because 
Montaigne  has  the  perverted  notion  that  truth  is 
static  and  superhuman  throughout  that  he  uses  them 
to  belittle  human  insight.  The  folly  is  not  the 
measuring  of  truth  and  error  on  the  scale  of  human 
experience;  but  of  reducing  them  to  a  scale  of  pure 
reason. 


8 


102 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Garcilasso 
de  la  Vega 


Fact  and 
analogy 


There  is  an  odd  and  interesting  passage  in  Gar¬ 
cilasso  de  la  Vega  (Royal  Commentaries)  illustrating 
the  same  mixture  of  shrewd  insight  and  rationalistic 
frailty.  Garcilasso  is  arguing  for  the  habitability 
of  the  torrid  and  frigid  zones.  As  for  the  habitable¬ 
ness  of  the  tropics,  he  was  born  there,  and  could 
testify  from  experience.  But  for  the  frigid  zones: 
“God  has  not  made  such  great  regions  of  the  earth 
that  they  should  remain  useless,  since  it  is  well 
known  that  he  has  created  this  vast  globe  as  the 
dwelling-place  of  man.  .  .  This  is  confirmed  by 

the  word  of  God  himself,  who,  having  created  our 
first  parents,  commanded  them :  ‘Increase  and  mul¬ 
tiply;  fill  the  earth,  and  render  it  subject  to  you.’  ” 
In  good  time,  Garcilasso  hopes,  God  will  reveal  the 
secrets  of  these  seemingly  waste  regions,  as,  in  good 
time,  he  has  revealed  the  New  World.  “And  this,’' 
he  says,  “without  doubt  will  turn  to  confusion  and 
shame  those  overbold  ones  who  by  their  natural 
philosophy  foolishly  imagine  that  the  divine  power 
cannot  pass  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  human  spirit, 
failing  to  consider  that  from  the  one  science  to  the 
other  there  is  no  less  a  distance  than  from  the  finite 
to  the  infinite.” 

Garcilasso’s  evidence  is  of  two  sorts :  statement  of 
fact  and  reasoning  from  analogy.  It  is  obvious  that 
he  relies  for  persuasion  upon  the  analogies  rather 
than  the  facts;  they  loom  more  important  in  his 
mind.  His  willingness  to  abnegate  present  under¬ 
standing,  to  trust  in  God’s  good  time,  is  but  the 
measure  of  his  faith  in  the  analogical  argument. 
The  distance  from  natural  science  to  teleology,  from 
fact  to  divine  plan,  is  not,  however,  as  he  conceives 
it,  from  the  finite  to  the  infinite;  rather  it  is  from  the 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


103 


infinite  to  the  finite ;  for  the  teleology  is  but  his  man- 
measure  of  God.  Teleology  is  his  account  of  Nature, 
in  so  far  as  Nature  is  anthropomorphised,  and  hence 
made  worthy  of  trust  and  of  veneration.  And  this 
is  at  once  the  ground  for  the  stress  laid  on  analogical 
reasonings  and  the  occasion  of  his  faith  in  their 
finality. 

Precisely  similar  is  Parmenides’  argument  for  the 
spherical  shape  of  the  World :  the  sphere  is  the  most 
perfect  of  figures,  and  the  Whole  can  be  nothing 
short  of  the  most  perfect.  Copernicus  reasons :  ‘Tn 
the  midst  of  all  stands  the  sun;  for  who  could  in  this 
most  beautiful  temple  place  this  lamp  in  another  or 
better  place  than  that  from  which  it  can  at  the  same 
time  illuminate  the  whole  ?”  In  each  case  the  truth 
is  in  the  analogical  justification.  The  fact  is  only 
incidental  to  the  mind’s  history. 

It  is  worth  remarking  that  this  reasoning  is  not 
only  valid,  but  that  it  is  the  only  possible  valid  rea¬ 
soning.  “The  greatest  thing  by  far  is  to  have  a 
command  of  metaphor;  this  alone  cannot  be  im¬ 
parted  by  another;  it  is  the  mark  of  genius.”  Aris¬ 
totle  is  defining  the  poetic  endowment ;  but  his  words 
are  equally  true  in  the  realm  of  reason.  For  all  rea¬ 
soning  is  essentially  poetic  and  all  our  words  are 
metaphors.  It  is  only  in  the  infinite  and  chaotic 
realm  of  fact  that  we  at  once  escape  poetry  and 
reason,  humanity  and  truth. 

I  think  that  most  of  our  difficulties  with  reason¬ 
ings  grow  out  of  their  more  or  less  indissoluble 
union  with  the  anti-reason  of  the  world  of  fact;  rea¬ 
son  follows  the  senses  and  reason  has  short  wings, 
says  Dante.  Reason  represents  cosmos,  fact  chaos; 
and  the  two  are  indefinitely  interbound.  Of  course 


Parmenides 

and 

Copernicus 


Poetics 

1459a 


Dante 


104 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Truth 
is  an 
instrument 


Its 

measures 

change 


this  is  but  another  way  of  saying  that  we  are  human 
beings  in  the  midst  of  a  universe  that  is  only  frag- 
mentarily  humanized.  But  for  some  restless  cause 
this  is  a  condition  we  cannot  contemplate  with  con¬ 
tempt.  Further,  it  involves  us  in  the  most  deceptive 
snares ;  for  we  are  ever  seeing  the  half-incarnations, 
the  half -humanizations  of  fact, — jackal-headed,  bull¬ 
bodied,  winged  and  taloned  human  monstrosities, — 
which  we  know  must  be  false  yet  feel  to  be  real. 

This  is  because  we  have  not  yet  learned  to  treat 
our  ideas  for  what  alone  they  are — functions,  or 
powers,  of  reality.  Truth  is  an  instrument,  not  a 
picture, — and  where  the  picture  element  intrudes  (as 
intrude  it  must) ,  what  we  get  is  a  defect  of  the  truth. 
“The  definition  of  being  is  simply  power,”  and 
power  is  the  quintessence  of  truth.  It  need  hardly 
be  added  that  this  power  is  psychical ;  and  therefore 
human ;  and  therefore  a  waxing  or  a  waning  power. 
Its  individuality  in  Nature  is  that  of  the  human  na¬ 
ture  of  which  it  is,  as  it  were,  the  barometric  ex¬ 
pression. 

“Man  is  the  measure  of  all  things.”  But  man’s  is  a 
changing,  a  growing  nature.  Ever  he  seeks  to  pro¬ 
ject  this  nature  out  into  the  cosmos  which  environs 
him,  and  ever  he  finds  the  cosmos  growing  with  his 
own  inner  growth.  The  system  of  the  sciences  is 
continually  enlarging  and  must  continue  to  enlarge 
so  long  as  there  is  growth  of  intelligence.  The  sys¬ 
tem  of  the  sciences  is  our  truth.  And  this  is,  of 
course,  to  say  that  truth  is  ever  changing,  ever  grow¬ 
ing.  Truth  is  relative  to  human  insight.  It  is  noth¬ 
ing  fixed  in  the  being  of  the  world  of  fact ;  it  is  only 
that  ideal  of  this  world  which  mind  has  found  useful 
to  mind’s  purpose. 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


105 


VI 

And  from  this  point  of  view  we  are  warranted  in 
criticising  the  conception  of  Nature  which  commonly 
goes  under  the  name  of  materialism  or  of  mechan¬ 
ism, — the  view,  often  called  the  scientific  view  of 
things,  which  asserts  that  our  earth  and  our  solar 
system  are  but  a  phase  in  the  evolution  of  some 
primordial  cloud  of  star  dust,  due  in  the  tale  of  the 
ages  to  become  star  dust  once  again.  From  nebulae 
worlds  are  generated  to  be  resolved  once  more  to 
nebulae  after  running  their  course.  Man’s  life  is  but 
an  incident  of  this  cosmic  process,  it  is  meaninglessly 
generated  to  be  as  meaninglessly  snuffed  out;  and 
the  sole  role  of  human  intelligence  is  to  evolve  a 
knowledge  of  the  uselessness  and  hopelessness  of 
human  life,  while  the  acme  of  human  dignity  lies  in 
the  attainment  of  a  sort  of  melancholy  satisfaction 
in  reviewing  the  grim  spectacle  of  the  cosmic  aeons. 
Atque  iterum  ad  Troiam  magnus  mittetur  Achilles; 
renascentur  religiones,  et  ccremoniae,  res  hiimanae 
in  idem  recident,  nihil  nunc  est  quod  non  olim  fuit, 
et  post  saeculorum  revolutiones  alias,  erit.^  The 
world  is  self-repeating,  and  self-repeating  in  its 


2“For  as  though  there  were  a  Metempsychosis,  and  the  soul  of  one 
man  passed  into  another,  Opinions  do  find,  after  certain  Revolutions, 
men  and  minds  like  those  that  first  begat  them”  ....  The  pertinence 
of  this  aphorism  of  the  Religio  Medici  is  most  excellently  shown  by 
the  history  of  the  very  figure  in  which  it  is  expressed.  “Plato’s  year” 
(“a  revolution  ot  certain  thousand  years,  when  all  things  should  return 
unto  their  former  estate,  and  he  be  teaching  again  in  his  school,  as 
when  he  delivered  this  opinion” — as  Sir  Thomas  explains  it)  is  a  con¬ 
ception  already  venerable  in  Plato’s  day, — fathered  alike  by  Chaldee, 
Etruscan,  Hindu  and  Maya.  Yet  it  is  refurbished  to  us  of  today  as 
a  new  and  scientific  conception.  “The  atoms  in  the  tear  wherewith 
your  winking  eyelid  has  just  now  moistened  your  eyelid,  where  were 
fhey  when  the  solar  nebula  reached  out  as  far  as  Neptune?  .  .  .  . 
They  may  have  moistened  the  eyes  of  a  greater  than  Shakespeare  in  the 
course  of  the  history  of  the  last  nebula  but  one,  or,  gathered  into  over¬ 
flowing  tears,  they  may  express  the  agony  of  sorrow  or  ecstasy  of  joy 
in  some  heart  like  yours  that  may  beat  in  the  course  of  Cosmic  evolu¬ 
tion  some  ten  or  a  billion  nebulie  hence”  (C.  W.  Saleeby).  We  now 
look  upon  the  annus  magnus  as  a  tour  de  force  of  mythologizers;  but  it 
is  every  whit  as  scientific  as  the  modern  cycle  of  reduplicating  nebu¬ 
lae.  Both  conceptions  are  merely  the  expression  of  the  limitation  of 
human  imagination:  the  only  science  involved  is  psychology. 


Nebular 

worlds 


Annus 

Magnus 


106 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Cosmic 

cycles 


Truth 
is  an 
image 


every  detail, — for  the  reason  that  man  can  imagine 
nothing  new.  This  is  but  another  species  of  anthro¬ 
pomorphism, — man  worshiping  the  shadow  of  his 
blinder  self ;  for  the  conception  thus  raised  up  as  the 
august  antipode  of 'human  frailty  is  still  a  creation 
of  the  human  mind,  a  part  of  the  proper  furniture  of 
that  conscious  being  which  is  summoned  to  abash¬ 
ment. 

The  conception  of  the  life  of  the  universe  as  con¬ 
sisting  of  cycles  of  blind  evolutions  followed  by 
blind  destructions  is  not  a  new  conception.  It  is  older 
than  the  despair  of  Buddha,  and  if  in  no  just  sense 
ascribable  to  Heraclitus,  it  is  not  to  be  distinguished 
from  the  conception  which  lay  at  the  basis  of  the 
ascetic  abnegation  of  the  Stoics  or  that  which  issued 
in  Proclus’s  ghastly  theory  of  world  degeneration. 
It  may  be  that  the  conception  is  true.  But  the  “may 
be,”  let  it  be  understood,  is  merely  an  acknowledg¬ 
ment  of  human  fallibility.  It  means  only  that  our 
finite  knowledge  is  incapable  of  conclusively  gain¬ 
saying  any  possibility;  it  does  not  mean  that  the 
theory  itself  is,  humanly  speaking,  probable  or 
plausible. 

For  we  must  remember  our  premises.  Truth  is 
not  the  gist  of  reality,  but  our  scheme  of  it,  measured 
by  our  intelligence;  and  our  nature  and  intelligence 
are  ever-growing.  If  we  know  anything  in  this 
world  it  is  the  fact  of  growth — the  fact  of  ever- 
receding  limits  to  knowledge — the  fact  of  never- 
ending  imaginative  conquests.  Growth  of  mind  is 
growth  of  imagination;  growth  of  imagination  is 
continuation  of  our  mental  conquest  and  absorption 
of  nature.  There  is  no  ultimate  or  absolute  truth  so 
long  as  life  is,  nor  is  any  final  pronouncement  of 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


107 


man’s  destiny  possible  so  long  as  man  is  engaged  in 
making  his  place  in  the  world. 

It  is  not  unnatural,  then,  if  we  feel  a  certain  gro¬ 
tesqueness  in  the  contention  of  those  whose  business 
it  is  to  be  seers  of  truth,  that,  with  the  bourne  of 
their  imaginations  reached,  the  fullness  of  human 
knowledge  is  in  sight.  To  be  sure,  we  concede  a 
limit  at  which  each  individual  imagination  must  balk 
further  progress ;  but  that  limit  attained,  it  is  not  the 
part  of  an  oft-vaunted  scientific  humility  to  chal¬ 
lenge  future  insight.  It  is  as  were  the  imagination 
to  come  saying :  ‘T  am  old.  I  am  weak  and  worn.  I 
can  see  no  more.  But  I  have  conceived  and  brought 
forth  my  thought,  the  satiate  truth.  Beyond  there  is 
nothing.” 

lam  nemo,  fessus  satiate  videndi, 
suspicere  in  caeli  dignatur  lucida  templa ! 

It  is  little  wonder  that  such  a  view  should  have 
led,  through  the  contrariety  of  despair,  to  Nietz¬ 
sche’s  barbaric  laudation  of  man  as  the  ^^great  blond 
beast”  overriding  natural  destinies.  But  it  is  won¬ 
der  that  it  could  ever  so  appeal  to  human  rationality 
as  to  blind  men  to  the  evidences  of  intelligence  in  the 
world.  Our  own  reason  is  an  instance  of  this  intel¬ 
ligence,  and  we  are  at  least  parcel  of  Nature.  Nor  is 
there  any  contradiction  of  science  in  making, — nor 
any  warrant  of  science  which  opposes, — the  asser¬ 
tion  of  higher  intelligence  than  ours  in  the  universe, 
battling,  with  us,  against  night  and  chaos. 

Furthermore,  even  in  the  mechanistic  view  of  Na¬ 
ture,  there  is  an  invariable,  if  often  unwitting,  insis¬ 
tence  upon  the  human  factor — the  man-value  of 
truth.  In  itself  mechanism  is  the  most  monstrous  of 


Imaginative 

satiety 


Lucretius 
II.  1038 


108 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Faith 
of  the 
Mechanist 


idolatries.  It  outrages  every  sentiment  of  the  soul, 
every  principle  of  the  reason  (though  this  is  not 
saying  that  it  may  yet  not  be  fact;  if  the  world  be 
chaos,  reason  is  chaotic  with  the  rest).  In  order  to 
redeem  it,  the  mechanist  seeks  to  furbish  it  up  with 
some  aspect  of  human  significance.  The  best  of  his 
conception  is  a  sort  of  Overman, — one  who  has  ex¬ 
tinguished  all  the  warmth  of  human  feeling  and 
desire,  and  in  place  of  a  destiny  answering  man’s 
natural  needs  has  set  the  chill  ideal  of  impassive  In¬ 
tellect.  But  this,  too,  is  human.  Man  after  all  is 
the  measure;  he  alone  is  the  unit  of  worth — he,  the 
weak  sport  and  victim  of  the  colossal  nightmare!  If 
there  are  meanings,  they  are  meanings  for  the  hu¬ 
man  soul;  if  there  are  truths,  they  are  truths  of 
human  destiny;  if  any  value  is,  it  is  the  creation  of 
human  experience.  The  intellectual  value  that  is 
recognized  is  a  product  of  dissection  and  mutilation 
— self-dissection,  self-mutilation — but  it  is  none  the 
less  part  and  parcel  of  man’s  being.  The  naive 
openness  of  the  confession  shows  the  faith  of  the 
mechanist  the  more  appalling.  One  sees  him  pre¬ 
carious  on  the  verge  of  realization ;  one  trembles  for 
the  revelation  that  may  shatter  his  trust.  Helpless 
in  the  coils  of  his  belief,  already  he  begins  to  feel 
dimly  the  horror  of  it,  the  horror  he  has  never  dared 
to  front,  face  to  face.  With  the  desperate  old  in¬ 
stincts  of  his  soul  he  clutches  still  the  humanhood 
for  which  his  creed  has  no  place,  attesting  still  the 
supreme  worth  of  that  spirit  his  philosophy  must 
deny.  Man,  though  mere  mortality,  about  to  die,  he 
salutes. 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


109 


VII 


Perhaps  the  wisest  of  the  ancient  sayings  concern¬ 
ing  truth  is  Plutarch’s,  “Truth  is  a  striving  after 
divinity.”  In  what  has  preceded  I  have  endeavored 
to  show  that  truth  belongs  to  the  world  of  ideas  and 
ideal  relations — of  human  ideas,  human  thought. 

But  there  is  another  world  of  Ideas — Plato’s 
world  of  divine  Ideas,  the  model  and  archetype  of 
the  visible  universe.  Human  ideas,  according  to 
Plato,  and  human  works,  and  indeed  all  the  works 
of  visible  nature,  are  but  imitations  of  these  divine 
archetypes.  They  are  but  expressions  of  that  dumb 
striving  of  all  imperfect  being  after  perfect  being 
which  Plato  found  to  be  motive  alike  of  the  history 
of  mankind  and  the  history  of  changing  nature. 

Nowadays  we  give  Plato’s  thought  a  new  inter¬ 
pretation.  In  the  light  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
we  are  once  again  brought  face  to  face  with  a 
scheme  of  nature  the  motive  of  which  is  the  striving 
of  an  imperfect  after  a  perfect  being.  Through  the 
long  ages  of  geologic  time  we  see  species  and  genera 
and  orders  of  life,  at  first  embryonic  in  form,  afford¬ 
ing  only  a  faint  premonition  of  their  eventual  type, 
proceeding  by  devious  and  laborious  paths  to  this 
type’s  realization.  A  striking  example  of  this  is 
shown  in  the  development  of  that  one  of  the  orders 
of  the  mollusc  class — the  Cephalopoda, — now  only 
represented  by  the  “many-chambered  nautilus.”  Be¬ 
ginning  far  back  in  Palaeozoic  times  with  genera  of 
the  type  of  the  Orthoceras,  preserved  to  us  in  the 
form  of  simple  conical  shells  compartmentally  di¬ 
vided,  this  branch  developed  through  the  ages ;  first, 
slightly  curved  forms;  and  then  the  more  and  more 


Divine 

Ideas 


The 

“chambered 

nautilus” 


110 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Evolutional 

teleology 


Our  human 
form  is 
not  our 
material 
form 


tightly  coiled  varieties  with  ever-increasing  com¬ 
plexity  of  structure,  which  culminates  in  the  Am¬ 
monites — coil  contiguous  upon  coil.  It  was  as  if, 
through  all  those  millions  of  years,  nature  had  held 
before  herself  this  ideal  of  beauty,  to  be  consum¬ 
mated  only  through  infinite  experiment,  infinite  en¬ 
deavor,  infinite  striving.  Thus  the  wonder  of  the 
Ammonite  is  a  part  of  the  meaning  of  the  Ortho- 
ceras,  though  the  realization  of  this  meaning  was  to 
be  bought  at  a  price  of  3Sons.  So  it  is  with  every 
natural  type.  It  is  contained  implicitly  in  its  dim 
precursors,  but  only  the  long  years  can  bring  na¬ 
ture’s  thought  to  the  surface. 

Does  not  this  mean  intelligence,  reason,  plan  in 
the  universe  ?  A  truth  like  our  truth  in  being  ideal, 
in  existing  for  the  future  toward  which  like  ours,  it 
is  ever  reaching  out?  It  means  this,  or  our  own 
truth  is  illusion. 

And  the  human  mind, — the  human  mind  is  itself 
a  product  of  this  striving  growth.  It  is  itself  a  part 
of  the  divine  plan  contained  in  that  world  of  ideas, 
which  forecasts  evolutions.  We  as  human  animals 
are  creatures  of  this  creative  Nature. 

Only — and  here  is  the  great  fact — the  end  of  our 
development  is  not  its  material  form.  Nature  has 
not  exhausted  her  gift  to  man  in  the  creation  of  his 
body, — his  physical  vital  history.  She  has  given 
him  mind.  And  it  is  the  great  function  of  mind  to 
win  for  us  freedom  from  the  flux  and  flow  of  merely 
physical  destinies.  In  attaining  the  ideal  the  mind 
becomes  emancipated  from  the  perishable  world  of 
things;  it  wins  its  freedom,  as  Spinoza  puts  it,  in 
the  world  of  ideas.  Truth,  then — our  human  truth, 
relative,  mutable,  ever  imperfect,  ever-growing, — 


TRUTH  AND  NATURE 


111 


is  the  means  and  symbol  of  the  deliverance  of  the 
soul  from  merely  mortal  destinies.  It  is  not  foi 
what  truth  pictures  to  us — the  world  idea  it  gen¬ 
erates  from  generation  to  generation — that  it  has 
meaning,  but  for  what  truth  does  for  us,  that  free¬ 
ing  of  the  spirit  which  can  come  only  with  ideals 
that  lift  us  above  the  chance  and  circumstance  of 


material  time.  “Truth  is  a  striving  after  divinity’^ 
— that  divinity  which  from  the  first  man  has  found 
only  in  the  world  of  his  ideals. 


lo  veggio  ben  che  giammai  non  si  sazia 
Nostro  intelletto,  se  il  ver  non  lo  illustra, 
Di  fuor  dal  qual  nessun  vero  si  spazia. 
Posasi  in  esso,  come  fiera  in  lustra, 

Tosto  che  giunto  I’ha :  e  giugner  puollo; 
Se  non,  ciascun  disio  sarebbe  frustra. 
Nasce  per  quello,  a  guisa  di  rampollo, 

Appie  del  vero  il  dubbio :  ed  e  natura, 

Ch’  al  sommo  pinge  noi  di  collo  in  collo. 


Dante 
perceives 
that  truth 
is  desire 
of  God — 
Paradiso, 
IV 


•  Here,  more  simply  than  in  all  the  writings  of  the 
philosophers,  is  summarized  the  part  and  character 
of  our  ideal  of  Truth, — showing  it  final  in  unattain- 
;  ment,  inspiring  in  its  very  imperfection,  stable  only 
in  its  evanescence,  yet  building  as  upon  a  rock  the 
i  firm  structure  of  human  Faith. 


i 


V.  THE  GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY 

OF  TRUTH 


Darknesse  and  light  hold  interchangeable  dominions,  and 
alternately  rule  the  seminal  state  of  things. 

— Sir  Thomas  Browne. 


I 


Optimism 

of 

Philosophy 


IT  is  of  curious  interest  that,  regarded  in  its  whole 
course,  philosophy  has  been  optimistic.  It  has 
pronounced  truth  good.  There  have  been,  there 
still  are,  pessimists :  Proclus  and  Schopenhauer  and 
all  Asia.  But  the  world  is  yet  a  livable  world,  and 
the  philosophic  phrasing  of  this  livableness  is  that 
its  truth  is  a  good  truth.  The  race  has  lived  and 
thriven,  it  has  achieved  a  certain  mastery  over  na¬ 
ture,  harnessing  her  powers  to  the  fulfillment  of 
men’s  needs;  nay,  in  the  very  opulence  of  its  ruler- 
ship  contriving  new  needs  for  her  ministration.  That 
philosophy  were  less  than  human  which  should  fail 
to  nod  its  Jovian  approval  of  such  efficient  living! 

And  yet  it  is  of  curious  interest, — not  that  phi¬ 
losophy  should  have  made  appetite  the  measure  of 
truth,  for  without  this  she  could  not  have  been 
philosophy;  nor  yet  that  she  should  have  pro¬ 
nounced  the  world  livable  and  life  good,  for  other¬ 
wise  she  would  have  countered  biological  fact, — but 
it  is  of  curious  interest  that  the  credo  in  a  life  domi¬ 
nantly  good  should  have  expanded  into  a  credo  in  a 
life  absolutely  good,  that  the  recognition  that  the 
controlling  truths  of  nature  are,  humanly  speaking, 
beneficent  should  have  crystallized  in  the  dogma  of 

the  identity  of  the  true  and  the  good. 

112 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  113 


Of  course  the  main  stress,  the  “drive,”  of  experi¬ 
ence  is  all  in  this  direction:  the  truths  that  interest 
and  hold  us  are  the  ductile,  the  malleable  truths  of 
our  world;  life  is  action,  and  the  thought-reaction 
of  efficient  living  naturally  brings  into  emphasis 
complaisant  truths.  Nevertheless,  it  would  seem 
that  the  consciousness,  inevitable  to  every  human 
being,  of  the  stubbornness  and  inductility  of  the 
moiety  of  experience  ought  to  preclude  any  generali¬ 
zation  of  all  particular  truths  into  one  truth,  homo¬ 
geneously  beneficent.  There  are  unconquerable  and 
even  “brutal”  facts  in  every  life,  for  whose  truth  it 
is  normal  to  expect  recognition;  and  yet,  I  some¬ 
times  think,  the  chief  “job”  of  philosophy  has  been 
to  “get  around”  these  facts. 

Now  I  do  not  believe  that  this  task  could  ever 
have  been  performed,  even  plausibly,  but  for  a  sub¬ 
tle  duplicity  in  the  measures  we  have  set  for  truth. 
This  duplicity  derives,  I  imagine,  from  Plato.  In 
the  Philebos,  Plato  makes  truth  and  goodness  alike 
into  ends  of  action,  for  he  speaks  of  “the  power  or 
faculty  .  .  .  which  the  soul  has  of  loving  truth, 

and  of  doing  all  things  for  the  sake  of  it,”  and  he 
also  says,  “that  for  the  sake  of  which  something 
else  is  done  must  be  placed  in  the  class  of  the  good, 
and  that  which  is  done  for  something  else,  in  some 
other  class.”  That  which  is  sought  for  its  own  sake 
is  good,  and  the  soul  loves  truth  for  truth’s  sake. 
The  good,  then,  is,  at  least  in  part,  the  true,  but  that 
truth  does  not  exhaust  the  meaning  of  goodness  is 
the  whole  intent  of  this  dialogue.  The  conclusion 
is  thus  presented : 


Truth’s 

apologists 


Plato’s 

Philebos 


“And  now  the  power  of  the  Good  has  retired  into  the  region 


114 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Beauty, 
Symmetry, 
Truth 
form  the 
Good, 


but  the 
Imperfect 
is  evil 


of  the  Beautiful;  for  Measure  and  Symmetry  are  Beauty  and 
Virtue  the  world  over. 

“True. 

“Also  we  said  that  Truth  was  to  form  an  element  in  the 
mixture. 

“Certainly. 

“Then,  if  we  are  not  able  to  hunt  the  Good  with  one  idea 
only,  with  three  we  may  catch  our  prey;  Beauty,  Symmetry, 
Truth  are  the  three,  and  these  taken  together  we  may  regard 
as  the  single  cause  of  the  mixture,  and  the  mixture  as  being 
good  by  reason  of  the  infusion  of  them.” 

The  power  of  the  good  has  retired  into  the  region 
of  the  beautiful,  and  truth  forms  an  element  in  the 
mixture.  Plato  does  not  assert  the  identity  of  the 
true,  the  good,  and  the  beautiful;  though  he  does 
say  that  the  good  must  be  true  as  well  as  beautiful. 
Yet  in  analyzing  goodness  into  beauty  and  virtue 
and  truth,  and  in  finding  measure  and  symmetry — 
or,  as  we  should  say,  law  and  order — to  be  the  es¬ 
sence  of  beauty  and  virtue,  he  makes  more  than 
easy  the  step  which  philosophy  was  not  loath  to  take, 
summarized  in  the  great  trinitarian  doctrine  of  the 
essential  unity  of  truth,  goodness,  and  beauty. 

This  step,  as  I  say,  is  only  implicit  in  Plato’s  ut¬ 
terances,  though  as  I  conceive  his  philosophy,  he 
might  have  proceeded  to  the  explicit  dogma  with 
right  of  far  more  logical  grace  than  is  manifest  in 
most  of  his  successors  who  have  so  proceeded.  For 
the  very  heart  of  Plato’s  thinking  is  the  identifica¬ 
tion  of  truth  and  ideality.  He  does  not,  as  do  later 
thinkers,  attempt  to  justify  the  imperfect  world  of 
terrene  experience;  rather,  he  condemns  it, — with  a 
sensitive  and  poetic  sympathy  for  the  life  that  all 
men  share,  yet  none  the  less  with  the  conscientious 
austerity  of  his  idealism,  he  condemns  it,  severing  it 
hopelessly  from  the  empyreal  domain  of  truth.  Plato 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  115 


does  not  deny  the  existence  of  ugliness  and  pain  and 
evil  and  falsity;  he  does  not  justify  these  experi¬ 
ences  ;  but  he  asserts  that  there  is  a  world,  an  ideal 
world,  which  is  forever  free  of  them,  and  in  so  as¬ 
serting  he  is  immortally  true  to  the  idealizing  in¬ 
stincts  of  his  kind. 

II 

But  how  has  fared  the  dogma  in  the  thought  of 
Plato’s  philosophic  posterity?  The  duality  of  Plato’s 
cosmos — spite  of  the  fact  that  to  it  all  human  living 
gloryingly  testifies — has  seemed  to  his  successors, 
from  Aristotle  onward,  a  defect  to  be  overcome. 
Even  Christian  philosophy,  which  ought  to  have 
welcomed  Platonic  dualism  as  its  potent  ally,  has 
persistently  yielded  to  the  mania  for  monism.  Al¬ 
ready  with  Augustine  God  is  ^‘absolute,  immutable, 
omnipresent  Goodness  and  Truth  and  Beauty”;  and 
already  we  are  committed  to  the  Scholastic  formu¬ 
laries  :  ens  est  unum,  Being  is  One ;  and  this  One,  in 
relation  of  conformity  with  knowing,  is  ens  verum, 
in  relation  to  appetite  ens  honum,  in  relation  to  con¬ 
templation  of  restful  proportion  ens  pulchmm. 

The  breaking  away  from  Scholasticism  brought 
no  emancipation  from  this  trinitarianism.  Shaftes¬ 
bury  reasons :  ‘‘What  is  beautiful  is  harmonious  and 
proportionable ;  what  is  harmonious  and  proportion- 
able  is  true;  and  what  is  at  once  both  beautiful  and 
true  is,  of  consequence,  agreeable  and  good.”  This 
(obviously  reminiscent  of  the  Philebos)  is  made 
ground  for  identifying  goodness  and  truth  and 
beauty  in  their  mutual  predicability  with  respect  to 
a  single  creation.  Of  course  the  Leibnitzian  conten¬ 
tion  that  this  is  the  best  possible,  or  most  perfect,  of 


Plato’s 

dualism 


Augustine 
and  the 
Scholastics 


Shaftesbury 


116 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Leibnitz 


The 

Absolute 


Experience 

Manichsean 


worlds  is  but  another  iteration  of  the  same  hypothe¬ 
sis.  Perfection,  with  Leibnitz,  is  either  moral  or 
physical-metaphysical,  and  in  each  sense  it  may  be 
predicated,  in  the  greatest  possible  degree,  of  the 
one  world  which  actually  is. 

Finally  we  come  to  the  modern  philosophy  of  the 
Absolute,  the  last  desperate  expedient  to  save  the 
face  of  the  world !  The  Absolute  is,  in  the  first 
place,  absolute  reality.  But  the  real  is  ideal,  and  in 
ideality  is  the  essence  of  all  truth.  Hence  the  Abso¬ 
lute  is  the  absolute  truth.  Further,  being  Absolute, 
it  is  perfect;  perfection  is  absoluteness.  And  the 
meaning  of  perfection  can  only  be  finality  in  good¬ 
ness  and  beauty.  So  in  the  Absolute,  which  is  the 
essence  of  the  world,  is  the  summate  realization  of 
truth  and  goodness  and  beauty. 

Such,  briefly,  is  the  development  of  this  curious 
philosophical  assumption  that  the  whole  truth  of  life 
must  somehow  be  justified  to  the  living  as  at  once 
beautiful  and  good.  That  the  assumption  proceeds 
from  emotion  rather  than  logic  and  that  the  conclu¬ 
sions  which  it  prompts  are  clamorously  belied  by  ex¬ 
perience,  I  do  most  potently  believe.  The  world  in 
which  most  lives  pass  is  hopelessly  Manichaean,  com¬ 
pact  of  struggling  good  and  ill.  The  evil  that  men 
do  is  black  and  stinking,  and  it  lives  after  them.  And 
if  the  good,  oft  interred,  as  oft  rises,  it  is  only  to 
renew  its  war  with  ills  no  more  phantom  than  itself. 
Bitter-sweet  is  experience,  and  the  bitter  is  as  mor¬ 
dant  as  the  sweet  is  suave. 

But  if  experience  be  thus  doubly  edged  with  the 
twin  blade  of  pain  and  bliss,  if  the  hurt  of  life  and 
the  sin  of  it  be  stinging  sharp  in  its  substance,  what 
sense  shall  be  made  of  this  denial  of  truth  to  the 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  117 


darker  half  of  being?  How  can  philosophy  over¬ 
persuade  experience,  so  that  consciousness  of  evil 
shall  be  brought  to  belie  itself? 

This  is  the  moral  problem  of  the  universe  which, 
through  obdurate  centuries,  the  willful  optimism  of 
the  human  mind  has  tackled  and  tackled  again,  tire¬ 
lessly,  tenaciously. 

Obviously  the  problem  is  hopeless  from  the  human 
point  of  regard  (save,  indeed,  at  the  cost  of  human 
reason,  as  witness  Christian  Science!).  Obviously 
a  shift  of  vantage  must  precede  even  attempted  so¬ 
lution.  And  this  shift  was  early  made.  In  order  to 
sustain  the  goodness  of  all  truth,  truth  and  goodness 
alike  were  made  predicable  (in  their  totality,  taken 
to  be  the  same  as  their  reality)  not  of  human  ex¬ 
perience  as  human  beings  know  and  name  it,  but  of 
the  absolute  experience  of  the  creative  mind.  The 
Scriptures  offered  a  happy  starting-point  for  this 
shift : 

And  God  saw  everything  that  he  had  made,  and,  behold,  it 
was  very  good.  And  the  evening  and  the  morning  were  the 
sixth  day. 

Creation  was  completed,  and  it  was  good.  Hence¬ 
forth  theology  owned  but  one  task:  “to  justify  the 
ways  of  God  to  men.” 

The  shift  was  from  the  point  of  view  of  man’s 
insight  to  the  point  of  view  of  God’s  insight,  from 
the  reasoning  of  creature  to  the  reasoning  of  creator, 
from  humanism  to  cosmism.  Truly  the  device  is 
poignantly  simple!  Human  wretchedness  and  mis¬ 
ery  and  grief,  human  cruelty  and  sin  and  shame, 
human  agonies  under  the  butchership  of  nature — 
all  the  seeming  diabolism  of  the  world — were  to  be 
dissipated  by  a  change  of  perspective;  under  the  en- 


The  great 
apology 


God’s 

perspective 


9 


118 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Persuasion 


Christian 

philosophy 


chantments  of  cosmic  distances  all  the  harsh  and 
rasping  lines  of  the  pattern  of  life  were  to  melt  into 
easeful  and  gracious  curves  and  the  piercing  notes 
of  mortal  suffering  to  modulate  into  celestial  har¬ 
monies. 

If  there  were  not  something  so  desperately  pa¬ 
thetic  in  it  all — this  wild  effort  of  the  afflicted  atomy 
to  ‘‘save  the  phenomenon'’  of  creation — if  reason 
were  not  so  blindingly  in  tears,  nausea  could  be 
our  sole  reaction  to  such  thought.  But  the  pathos 
and  the  tears  are  there,  through  all  the  obdurate 
centuries. 

But  let  us  come  to  the  force  of  the  persuasion. 
Reasonings  set  forth  in  their  nakedness  are  impo¬ 
tent  to  hold  the  minds  of  men;  they  must  be  clothed 
in  the  bright  and  varied  raiment  of  passion  and 
imagination — this,  or  go  beggarly  to  starveling  ends. 
And  so  in  this  case :  God  is  all-wise  and  creation,  as 
he  sees  it,  all-good;  the  imperfection  of  a  relative 
and  mortal  being  is  cured  in  the  perfection  of  abso¬ 
lute  being.  In  doctrines  such  as  these  there  is  no 
solace  for  the  hurt  life  save  by  some  merciful 
descent  of  their  incarnate  grace  into  its  hell. 

And  how,  then,  has  it  been  brought  down,  this 
grace  ? 

The  history  of  Christian  philosophy  is  the  story. 
For  two  thousand  years  doctors  and  saints  have 
pleaded  the  sinfulness  of  their  kith  and  kind  and  the 
irresponsibility  of  the  Most  High.  For  two  thou¬ 
sand  years  Christendom  has  re-echoed  the  self-accu¬ 
sations  of  distraught  and  distempered  souls  and 
given  its  hourly  tithe  of  mutilated  lives  in  dreadful 
expiation.  For  two  thousand  years  humanity,  blind- 
led  through  shame  and  suffering,  has  cried  its  culpa 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  119 


me  a  into  impitiable  ears.  For  two  thousand  years 
man  has  apologized  for  God. 

Yet  in  these  two  millennia  a  great  change  has 
come  over  the  conception  of  God  and  over  the  hu¬ 
man  regard  of  the  problem  of  evil.  The  major 
premise — the  goodness  of  truth — has  not  been 
brought  into  question,  nor  has  the  method  of  justi¬ 
fying  this  premise  by  a  shift  from  the  human  to  the 
cosmic  perspective  been  relinquished,  but  the  dress 
of  the  argument,  that  which  gives  to  it  the  color  of 
persuasion,  has  undergone  an  entire  transformation. 
The  nature  of  God  himself  has  been  philosophically 
reconstructed,  and  for  the  sole  (though  uncon¬ 
scious)  purpose,  I  believe,  of  maintaining  his  moral¬ 
ity.  This  transformation  I  would  briefly  sketch. 

Ill 

The  primary  conception  of  God’s  nature — that 
with  which  Catholic  orthodoxy  starts,  and  which  the 
more  conservative  churches  and  the  orthodox  laities 
still  maintain — is  what  I  should  term  the  Hebraic 
conception.  This  is  the  conception  of  a  God  glori¬ 
fied  by  his  creation  and  praised  by  his  creatures : 

The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God;  and  the  firmament 
sheweth  his  handiwork. 

Or  again — 

All  thy  works  shall  praise  thee,  O  Lord;  and  thy  saints  shall 
bless  thee. 

They  shall  speak  of  the  glory  of  thy  kingdom,  and  talk  of 
thy  power ; 

To  make  known  to  the  sons  of  men  his  mighty  acts,  and 
the  glorious  majesty  of  the  kingdom. 

God,  in  this  view,  is  concerned  for  the  veneration  of 
his  creatures;  he  is  jealous  of  their  attention,  and 


Conception 
of  God 


Hebrew 

psalms 


120 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


St. 

Augustine 


S't.  Bernard 


Calvin 


glories  in  their  praise ;  even  the  divine  mercy  is  man- 
fested  not  as  the  compassionate  rescue  of  the  af¬ 
flicted  creature,  but  as  a  display  of  the  benignity  of 
the  creator. 

Such  already  is  the  God  of  Augustine,  and  hence 
of  historic  orthodoxy.  From  that  condemnation, 
says  the  great  father,  which  came  upon  mankind  a.> 
a  result  of  the  sin  of  the  parents,  ‘‘none  can  ever  be 
freed,  but  by  the  free  and  gracious  mercy  of  God, 
which  makes  a  separation  of  mankind,  to  shew  in 
one  of  the  remainders  the  power  of  grace,  and  in  the 
other  the  revenge  of  justice.  Both  which  could  not 
be  expressed  upon  all  mankind,  for  if  all  had  tasted 
of  the  punishments  of  justice,  the  grace  and  mercy 
of  the  Redeemer  had  had  no  place  in  any;  and  again, 
if  all  had  been  redeemed  from  death,  there  had  been 
no  object  left  for  the  manifestation  of  God’s  jus¬ 
tice;  but  now  there  is  more  left  than  taken  to  mercy, 
that  so  it  appear  what  was  due  unto  all,  without  any 
impeachment  of  God’s  justice,  who  notwithstanding 
having  delivered  so  many,  has  herein  bound  us  for¬ 
ever  to  praise  his  gracious  commiseration.” 

It  is  the  business  of  creation  to  extol  its  Lord  and 
Maker,  even  election  and  damnation  are  of  a  piece 
with  the  argument.  “The  Church,”  saith  St.  Ber¬ 
nard,  “is  wonderfully  concealed  in  the  bosom  of  a 
blessed  predestination  and  in  the  mass  of  a  miserable 
damnation.”  Calvin  puts  the  matter  in  words  which 
only  the  sternness  of  his  unlovely  personality  can 
preserve  from  mockery: 

It  is  unreasonable  that  man  should  scrutinize  with  impunity 
those  things  which  the  Lord  has  determined  to  be  hidden  in 
himself ;  and  investigate,  even  from  eternity,  that  sublimity  of 
wisdom  which  God  would  have  us  to  adore  and  not  compre¬ 
hend,  to  promote  our  admiration  of  his  glory. 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  121 


This,  as  preface  to  the  credo : 

We  assert,  that  by  an  eternal  and  immutable  counsel,  God 
has  once  for  all  determined,  both  whom  he  would  admit  to 
salvation,  and  whom  he  would  condemn  to  destruction.  We 
affirm  that  this  counsel,  as  far  as  concerns  the  elect,  is  founded 
on  his  gratuitous  mercy,  totally  irrespective  of  human  merit; 
but  that  to  those  whom  he  devotes  to  condemnation,  the  gate  of 
life  is  closed  by  a  just  and  irreprehensible,  but  incomprehensible 
judgment. 

There  remained  but  for  Jeremy  Taylor  to  clinch 
the  ghastly  argument  by  setting  it  in  ghastly  verse : 

O  mighty  God, 

Let  not  thy  bruising  rod 

Crush  our  loins  with  an  eternal  pressure ; 

O  let  thy  mercy  be  the  measure. 

For  if  thou  keepest  wrath  in  store 
We  all  shall  die 
And  none  be  left  to  glorify 
Thy  name,  and  tell 

How  thou  hast  saved  our  souls  from  hell. 

The  modern  mind  shudders  as  it  calls  the  roll  of 
these  grim  defensores  fidei.  They  have  made  their 
God  monstrous  with  reason,  and  with  the  name  of 
holiness  they  have  apotheosized  inhumanity.  Their 
words  seem  to  be  seasoned  in  cruelty,  and  their 
ready  consignment  of  the  major  portion  of  their 
fellow  men  to  eternal  damnation  ^Tor  the  better 
glory  of  God”  sounds  like  terrible  blasphemy. 
Nevertheless,  there  is  a  certain  raw-boned  strength 
in  all  this  thinking  that  has  not  even  yet  lost  its 
imaginative  appeal,  there  is  human  passion  at  the 
core  of  it,  and  human  pain.  We  may  feel  a  certain 
mingling  of  amusement  with  sympathy  at  the  subtle 
way  in  which  Aquinas  eludes  the  difficulties  of  the 
question  whether  God  may  not  exact  of  one  the 
relinquishment  of  beatitude  ad  decorem  universi, 


Predestina¬ 

tion 


Jeremy 

Taylor 


St.  Thomas 
Aquinas 


122 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


St.  Catherine 
of  Siena 


Dante 


Christian 

pessimism 


but  the  amusement  is  all  gone,  and  only  the  sym¬ 
pathy  left,  when  we  read  the  words  of  Catherine 
of  Siena: 

Better  were  it  for  me  that  all  should  be  saved,  and  I  alone 
(saving  ever  thy  charity)  should  sustain  the  pains  of  hell, 
than  that  I  should  be  in  paradise  and  all  they  perish  damned; 
for  greater  honor  and  glory  of  thy  name  would  it  be. 

For  it  was  this  Catherine  who  exposed  herself  to  a 
flow  of  boiling  water  the  while  she  meditated  upon 
the  pains  of  hell  and  besought  her  creator  to  accept 
what  she  thus  voluntarily  endured  in  expiation  of 
them.  Nor  can  we  follow  the  great  disciple  of 
Aquinas  through  his  remorseless  Inferno  without 
awe  of  the  endurance  with  which  the  passion  for 
justice  can  fortify  the  human  soul. 

The  truth  is — once  we  get  our  breath — this 
whole  development  is  not  humanly  unintelligible. 
It  is  a  harsh  spectacle,  but  it  is  the  outcome  of  harsh 
living.  We  realize  this,  I  think,  when  we  regard 
the  likenesses  of  these  by-gone  thinkers :  their  gaunt 
cheeks  and  corded  necks,  their  sunken  eyes  and  the 
great  features  that  stand  out  on  the  medallions. 
They  were  men  who  lived  the  lives  of  thinkers  in 
the  lurid  intervals  of  war,  and  it  is  not  strange  that 
blood  should  have  seemed  to  them  a  trifling  piacu- 
lum  to  righteousness  or  that  in  their  zest  for  moral 
goodness  they  should  have  shorn  the  world  of  loveli¬ 
ness. 

Further,  there  is  a  solidity  and  consistency  in 
their  thought  which  the  ensuing  age  does  not  present. 
Up  to  the  very  threshold  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
Christian  philosophy  is  consistently  pessimistic  so 
far  as  this  world  is  concerned.  Human  life  received 
a  wrong  start  from  the  first  parents  and  it  has  never 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  123 


been  righted.  The  best  we  can  make  out  of  a  bad 
predicament  is  a  tolerable  preparation  for  the  life 
to  come,  and  even  this  can  be  attained  only  by 
grievous  denial  of  what  seems  good  and  attractive 
to  us  here.  All  things  mundane  are  polluted,  and 
all  the  seeming  sweetness  of  nature  is  unclean. 

This,  I  say,  is  the  consistent  view  of  a  world 
which  has  fallen  from  grace,  and  it  makes  easier 
our  understanding  of  the  brutal  acceptance  of  the 
divine  condemnation,  giving,  too,  a  kind  of  pic¬ 
turesque  sturdiness  to  the  thought  of  men  who  could 
live  up  to  such  a  view.  We  realize,  of  course,  that 
they  saved  their  cosmos  to  optimism  by  the  introduc¬ 
tion  of  a  world  of  bliss  beyond — by  the  he  at  a  vita 
for  which  this  life  is  preparatory,  but  at  least  there 
was  nothing  cowardly  in  their  way  of  facing  the 
hard  preparation. 

As  much  can  not  be  said  for  the  eighteenth  cen¬ 
tury.  From  Leibnitz  onward  its  whole  smooth,  self- 
satisfied  course  betrays  a  substantial  participation  in 
the  good  things  of  this  life.  This  world  is  the  best 
possible  of  worlds,  so  good,  in  fact,  that  once  its 
procedure  was  inaugurated,  the  Almighty  became 
superfluous :  harmony,  pre-established  from  the  day 
of  creation,  pervades  all  its  elements.  In  the  begin¬ 
ning  God  completed  his  work  and  saw  that  it  was 
good,  and  the  repose  of  the  seventh  day  has  never 
since  been  broken.  This  implication  of  the  non¬ 
interference  of  the  creator  in  his  handiwork  led 
inevitably  to  the  deism  of  the  century:  a  creator, 
it  was  conceded,  was  necessary  to  the  first  operation 
of  the  world-engine,  but  the  operation  begun,  nature 
was  the  sufficient  explanation  of  its  continuation, 
God  was  thenceforth  otiose. 


A  fallen 
world 


Pre- 

established 

harmony 


124 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Deistic 

theology 


John  Donne 


Thus  with  an  altered  view  of  life  we  get  an  altered 
conception  of  God’s  nature.  The  life  of  this  world 
is  looked  upon  with  an  optimism  so  smug  and  com¬ 
placent  that  man  is  jealous  even  of  the  suggestion 
of  divine  interference  in  its  orderly  course.  Noth¬ 
ing  is  at  fault;  nothing  here  ought  to  be  changed; 
it  is  for  the  creator  to  keep  hands  off  lest  he  mar 
his  achievement.  God  can  add  nothing  to  the  world, 
and  if  the  world  can  be  said  to  glorify  God  it  is  in 
the  sense  in  which  a  prodigiously  endowed  child  con¬ 
fers  credit  upon  his  puzzled  parents.  Of  course  God 
is  already  at  a  vast  remove  from  humanity;  the 
world,  with  all  its  furniture,  is  but  his  toy,  his 
bauble,  a  six  days’  plaything,  and  already  we  have 
in  prediction  the  completer  separation  which  the 
next  century  is  to  bring. 

I  can  not  better  illustrate  the  transformation  in 
men’s  thought  that  takes  place  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  than  by  quoting  briefly 
from  an  English  poet  of  each  of  these  centuries. 
The  seventeenth  century  opens  with  Medisevalism — 
if  so  we  may  term  the  elder  view — still  dominant. 
All  the  learning  of  the  Renaissance,  all  the  emanci¬ 
pation  of  the  Reformation,  has  not  sufficed  to  dis¬ 
sipate  in  Christian  philosophy  its  gloomy  appraisal 
of  the  worldly  life  nor  to  alter  its  conception  of 
God  as  a  being  to  be  magnified  by  mortal  tribula¬ 
tion.  Indeed,  we  seem  to  meet  an  accentuation  of 
these  traits  in  the  Puritanic  reaction  against  the 
humanism  of  a  paganizing  lay  scholarship.  I  quo'te, 
however,  not  from  a  Puritan,  but  a  convert  from 
Catholicism  to  the  Church  of  England — from  Doc¬ 
tor  Donne’s  Anatomy  of  the  World,  wherein  “the 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  125 


frailty  and  the  decay  of  this  whole  world  is  rep¬ 
resented”  : 

Well  died  the  world,  that  we  might  live  to  see 
This  world  of  wit,  in  his  anatomy; 

No  evil  wants  his  good;  so  wilder  heirs 
Bedew  their  father’s  tombs  with  forced  tears, 

Whose  state  requites  their  loss :  whiles  thus  we  gain, 
Well  may  we  walk  in  blacks,  but  not  complain. 

So  the  poem  opens,  setting  its  hypothesis.  The 
meaning  of  human  endeavor  is  thus  set  forth; 

Let  no  man  say,  the  world  itself  being  dead, 

’Tis  labor  lost  to  have  discovered 

The  world’s  infirmities,  since  there  is  none 

Alive  to  study  this  dissection; 

For  there’s  a  kind  of  world  remaining  still. 

Though  she  which  did  inanimate  and  fill 
The  world,  be  gone,  yet  in  this  last  long  night. 

Her  ghost  doth  walk,  that  is,  a  glimmering  light, 

A  faint  weak  love  of  virtue  and  of  good. 

Reflect  from  her,  on  them  which  understood 
Her  worth;  and  though  she  have  shut  in  all  day, 

The  twilight  of  her  memory  doth  stay; 

Which,  from  the  carcass  of  the  old  world  free. 

Creates  a  new  world,  and  new  creatures  be 
Produced ;  the  matter  and  the  stuff  of  this, 

Her  virtue,  and  the  form  our  practice  is.  .  . 

So  man  ghostly  walks,  mid  the  slow  decay  of  his 
earthly  paradise — 

This  man,  whom  God  did  woo,  and  loth  to  attend 
Till  man  came  up,  did  down  to  man  descend. 

This  man  so  great,  that  all  that  is,  is  his, 

O  what  a  trifle,  and  poor  thing  he  is  I  .  . 

Be  more  than  man,  or  thou’rt  less  than  an  ant. 

....  so  is  the  whole  world’s  frame 
Quite  out  of  joint,  almost  created  lame: 

For,  before  God  had  made  up  all  the  rest. 

Corruption  entered,  and  deprav’d  the  best.  .  . 

Donne’s  stiffly  articulated  verse  seems  somehow 
particularly  appropriate  to  the  theology  it  conveys. 


An 

Anatomy 
of  the 
World 


126 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


John  Milton 


Alexander 

Pope 


It  moves  with  the  rattly  swing  of  the  dance  of 
death,  and  it  gives  us  a  sense  of  the  discords  and 
jars  of  creation  which  the  same  theology  entirely 
misses  in  the  symphonic  epic  of  his  great  contem¬ 
porary.  With  all  his  Puritanism  Milton  possessed 
the  humanist’s  love  of  beauty,  so  transforming  even 
diabolism  into  grandeur;  his  imagination  was  in¬ 
finitely  nobler  than  his  thought,  and  his  poetry  is 
hence  a  poorer  medium  for  this  thought  than  is 
that  of  the  more  narrowly  theological  divine.  Yet 
Donne  himself  has  imagination,  only  it  does  not 
move  in  the  domain  of  beauty:  lurid,  powerful,  it 
lights  deep  vistas  with  its  sudden  glows ;  flares  and 
expires,  like  the  very  reflection  of  the  pent  and 
smouldering  genius  of  the  Mediaeval  mind.  It  is 
unlovely,  but  it  is  not  without  fascination,  and  it 
commands  respect. 

Respect  is  an  attitude  which  it  is  extremely  difficult 
to  maintain  in  our  regard  of  the  work  of  that  eight¬ 
eenth-century  poet  who  travestied  Doctor  Donne. 
Pope’s  shallow  and  complacent  verse  is  perfectly 
adapted  to  the  shallow  and  complacent  philosophy 
of  a  shallow  and  complacent  century.  It  belongs 
to  a  period  when  men  made  conspicuous  display  of 
their  clothes  and  their  table  manners;  and  it  is  irk¬ 
some  for  us  of  an  inherital  period  (perhaps  because 
we  feel  so  keenly  the  vexatiousness  of  the  inheri¬ 
tance)  to  struggle  into  sympathy  with  it.  None  the 
less,  in  the  dialectic  of  history  the  eighteenth  cen¬ 
tury  occupies  a  solid  moment,  which  we  must  under¬ 
stand  if  we  are  to  advance  to  comprehension  •  of 
our  own  ways  of  thinking.  And  of  all  its  spokes¬ 
men  Pope  is  by  odds  the  most  loquaciously  adept. 
With  other  men,  while  their  philosophies  are  not 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  127 


I  profound,  they  have  not  lost  the  beauty  of  an  older 
^  humanism  or  the  earnestness  of  the  older  asceti¬ 
cism;  but  with  Pope  thought  is  only  a  special  kind 
of  elegance  and  truth  is  only  timeliness. 

The  very  key-note  of  Pope’s  Essay  on  Man  is 
the  key-note  of  the  mental  lightness  of  his  age. 

I  Milton  had  inaugurated  his  great  poem,  in  the  pre¬ 
ceding  century,  with  the  prayer : 

i  What  in  me  is  dark 

1  Illumine,  what  is  low  raise  and  support; 

That  to  the  height  of  this  great  Argument 
I  may  assert  Eternal  Providence, 

And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men. 

Pope  gives  us  his  measure  in 

Laugh  where  we  must,  be  candid  where  we  can; 

But  vindicate  the  ways  of  God  to  Man. 

And  the  fall  from  reverence  to  conformity,  from 
‘‘justification”  to  “vindication,”  is  but  the  moral 
token  of  the  intellectual  descent  which  is  typified. 

I  I  need  not  quote  Pope’s  familiar  epistles  at  any 
length.  A  few  summarizing  verses  will  suffice  to 
re-establish  their  general  context  and  import: 

All  Nature  is  but  Art,  unknown  to  thee; 

All  Chance,  Direction,  which  thou  canst  not  see; 

All  Discord,  Harmony  not  understood; 

All  partial  Evil,  universal  Good : 

And,  spite  of  Pride,  in  erring  Reason’s  spite. 

One  truth  is  clear.  Whatever  is,  is  right. 

We  have  to  read  this  twice  and  thrice,  and  read 
i '  it  yet  again,  before  we  begin  to  realize  that  here, 

I  in  mean  and  dingy  littleness,  is  preserved  the  mere 
i  logic  of  Augustine’s  fine  utterances : 

I  For  God  would  never  have  foreknown  vice  in  any  work  of 
I  his,  angel  or  man,  but  that  he  knew  in  like  manner  what  good 


Milton’s 

invocation 


Essay 
on  Man 


V 


128 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


De  Civitate 
Dei 


Nineteenth 

Century 

optimism 


use  to  put  it  unto,  so  making  the  world’s  course,  like  a  fair 
poem,  more  gracious  by  antithetic  figures.  .  . 

For  as  a  picture  shows  well  though  it  have  black  colors  in 
divers  places,  so  the  universe  is  most  fair,  for  all  these  stains 
of  sins,  which  notwithstanding,  being  weighed  by  themselves, 
do  disgrace  the  luster  of  it,  .  . 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  changed  effect?  It  is 
a  change  in  the  color  of  life.  In  Augustine  the 
thought  springs  from  the  fresh  ardors  of  a  beauty- 
loving  soul.  When  it  recurs  in  Calvin,  for  all  its 
bony  intellectuality,  it  is  saved  by  the  moral  stern¬ 
ness  of  the  thinker.  But  in  the  age  of  Pope  we  are 
well  aware  that  neither  the  beauty  of  the  cosmos 
nor  its  moral  order  was  felt  to  be  necessary  to  its 
human  comprehension  or  to  enhance  men’s  satisfac¬ 
tion  with  life  as  they  found  it.  Christian  philosophy 
was  a  mental  pose,  an  act  of  conformity,  and  its 
glib  recitation  serves  only  to  expound  its  spiritual 
hollowness.  Orthodoxy  had  been  lived  through; 
beauty  and  goodness  in  turn  it  had  lost;  and  at  last 
its  well-hinged  logic  showed  forth  with  all  the  neat 
articulation,  and  all  the  unloveliness,  of  a  blanched 
and  mounted  skeleton. 


IV 

It  is  small  wonder  that  the  succeeding  century, 
in  the  full  swing  of  a  buoyant  optimism,  should 
have  felt  the  need  of  a  revivified  philosophy  and  a 
reinvigorated  faith.  It  is  hardly  wonderful  that 
it  should  have  sought  the  new  light  with  as  little 
shift  as  possible  from  the  orthodoxy  of  the  cen¬ 
turies  past,  and  it  is  interesting  to  see  in  just  what 
directions  the  shift  which  it  does  make  carries  it. 

The  nineteenth-century  addition  to  Christian  phi¬ 
losophy  is  in  three  respects  striking.  First,  it  is  at 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  129 


one  with  historic  orthodoxy  in  justifying  creation 
from  God’s  point  of  view  rather  than  from  man’s; 
it  is  cosmist  rather  than  humanist.  Second,  it  differs 
from  the  earlier  orthodoxy  and  agrees  with  the 
eighteenth  century  in  its  optimistic  appraisal  of  this 
life.  Third,  its  conception  of  God’s  nature  is  revolu¬ 
tionary. 

I  have  said  that  the  early  Christian  conception  of 
the  divine  nature  was  Hebraic.  God  was  regarded 
as  the  father,  but  his  fathership  was  rather  that  of 
the  patriarchal  head  of  the  clan  than  of  the  sire 
of  an  only  son.  He  was  a  father  who  was  also  a 
ruler,  and  in  his  character  of  ruler  he  was  King 
of  Glory,  and  jealous  of  his  glorification.  He  was 
the  Lord  of  Praise, 

Placable  if  his  mind  and  ways  were  guessed, — 

though  only  revelation  could  insure  the  guessing. 
The  conception  is  of  a  God  intensely  interested  in 
the  world  he  has  created,  and  having  such  concern 
for  it  that  to  mistake  his  meaning  must  cost  his 
creatures  dear. 

We  have  seen  how  by  the  eighteenth  century  this 
intense  and  personal  interest  has  waned.  The  deis- 
tic  creator  who  sets  the  clock-work  of  the  universe 
going  derives  only  an  indifferent  edification  from 
his  contemplation  of  its  smooth  running.  Occa¬ 
sionally  he  may  interfere,  working  a  miracle  less 
for  the  benefit  of  creation  than  for  the  assuagement 
of  his  own  ennui,  but  on  the  whole  he  is  content 
to  let  the  goodness  of  his  work  manifest  itself  in 
its  mechanism.  This  is  the  eighteenth-century  view 
(exaggerated,  no  doubt,  but  only  to  its  fulfilled 
logic),  and  in  a  sense  it  affords  a  transition  to  the 


The  Deity 
as 

Patriarch 


Eighteenth 

Century 

self- 

satisfaction 


130 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Caliban 

upon 

Setebos 


The 

Absolute 


introduction  of  the  absolutely  faineant  deity  of  the 
nineteenth  century;  but  the  change  is  really  revolu¬ 
tionary. 

In  the  poem  from  which  I  have  just  cited,  Brown¬ 
ing  concedes  to  the  universe  another  and  diviner 
being  than  the  ‘‘placable”  Setebos : 

There  may  be  something  quiet  o’er  his  head, 

Out  of  his  reach,  that  feels  nor  joy  nor  grief, 

Since  both  derive  from  weakness  in  some  way. 

Ever  sure  in  his  theologizing  instinct,  Browning  is 
quite  right  here  in  setting  the  faineant  deity  at  an 
absolute  remove  from  the  creative :  the  one  can  not 
properly  be  derived  from  the  other.  It  is  a  new 
and  revolutionary  conception  of  God  which  the 
transcendentalists  of  the  nineteenth  century  intro¬ 
duce  into  Christian  philosophy. 

The  very  word  transcendental  characterizes  the 
revolution.  God  is  set  at  an  infinite  remove  frorr 
his  creation.  He  is  exalted  to  a  perfection  so  abso¬ 
lute  that  it  can  not  in  the  remotest  way  reflect  our 
sullied  life,  and  so  lonely  that  it  can  not  break  its 
solitudes  with  the  faintest  compassion  for  mortal 
pain.  Things  mortal  are  not  presented  to  the  Abso¬ 
lute  as  things  mortal :  chey  appear  to  it  only  as  the 
subtile  and  vanishing  complexions  of  an  experience 
in  which  time  and  passion  are  eternally  transmuted 
into  timelessness  and  passionlessness.  It  knows 
mortality  only  suh  specie  ceternitatis — as  once  for 
all  robbed  of  its  mortal  poignancy.  Knowing  the 
compensations  of  Eternal  Being,  it  is  content  to 
take  its  eternal  repose  in  the  actionless  activity  of 
this  knowledge. 

This  Quiet,  all  it  hath  a  mind  to,  doth, 

Esteemeth  stars  the  outposts  of  its  couch, 

But  never  spends  much  thought  nor  care  that  way. 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  131 


This  is  the  God  with  which  German  metaphysics 
has  replaced  the  personal  and  concerned  creator  of 
Hebraic  faith.  But  it  is  obvious  that  in  its  mere 
transcendency  such  a  God  is  impossible  as  the  object 
of  Christian  belief ;  and,  in  fact,  I  am  presenting 
but  half  the  picture  in  emphasizing  the  transcen¬ 
dency.  For  not  only  is  the  God  of  transcendental 
philosophy  an  utterly  transcendent  being,  but — 
strange  contradiction! — he  possesses  the  precisely 
opposite  quality  in  as  utter  a  degree.  The  abso¬ 
lute  experience  is  not  only  hopelessly  remote  from 
human  experience,  but  it  is  also  unwaveringly  im¬ 
manent  in  human  experience.  Totum  in  toto  et  in 
parte  totum:  immanence,  the  sensible  contrary  of 
transcendence,  is  made  the  co-attribute  of  God. 

I  can  not  enter  into  the  shrewd,  and  logistically 
unanswerable,  logic  which  makes  this  contradic¬ 
tion  appeal  to  men’s  minds  as  ‘‘the  better  reason”; 
but  I  do  wish  to  show  (since,  after  all,  our  logic  is 
but  our  shamed  apology  for  faith)  something  of 
the  force  of  its  spiritual  appeal.  And  this  appeal, 
I  believe,  is  due  in  large  part  to  the  admiration  for 
quiet  excited  by  an  unquiet  age,  and  again  to  the 
friendliness  and  sympathy  with  which  a  divine  im¬ 
manence  is  felt  to  endow  a  Nature  which  men  have 
come  so  wistfully  to  love.  Peace  and  sympathy — 
their  antithesis  to  our  perturbed  modernity  has  made 
these  seem  divine.  In  place  of  a  Heavenly  King, 
ruling  the  universe  with  a  sure  and  steady  hand, 
we  have  enthroned  a  Prince  of  an  unvexed  and  un¬ 
tempted  Peace;  in  place  of  a  watchful  and  omni¬ 
present  Providence,  argus-eyed  for  the  fall  of  a 
sparrow  or  the  numbering  of  our  hairs,  we  have 


Transcen¬ 

dental 

theology 


Peace  and 
Sympathy 


132 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Josiah 

Royce 


Proclus 


trusted  for  consolation  in  the  immanence  of  an 
Abiding  Presence. 

^‘Despite  the  vastness,  the  variety,  the  thrilling 
complexity  of  the  life  of  the  finite  world,’’  says 
Josiah  Royce,  “the  ultimate  unity  is  not  far  from 
any  one  of  us.  All  variety  of  idea  and  object  is 
subject,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the  unity  of  the  pur¬ 
pose  wherein  we  alone  live.  Even  at  this  moment, 
yes,  even  if  we  transiently  forget  the  fact,  we  mean 
the  Absolute.  We  win  the  presence  of  God  when 
we  most  flee.  We  have  no  other  dwelling-place  but 
the  single  unity  of  the  divine  consciousness.  In  the 
light  of  the  eternal  we  are  manifest,  and  even  this 
very  passing  instant  pulsates  with  a  life  that  all  the 
worlds  are  needed  to  express.  In  vain  would  we 
wander  in  darkness;  we  are  eternally  at  home  in 
God.” 

Immanent  in  human  experience,  yet  forever  tran¬ 
scending  experience,  as  near  to  life  as  a  mirrored 
reflection  yet  as  absolutely  cut  off  from  it  as  is 
mirrored  space  from  real  space, — this  nineteenth- 
century  conception  of  the  divine  nature  is  no  new 
one  in  history.  It  is  as  ancient  as  Brahm  in  the 
thought  of  India.  It  is  the  breath  of  life  to  the 
Neo-Platonists :  “Transcending  all  bodies  is  soul, 
transcending  souls  is  intellect,  transcending  in¬ 
tellectual  being  is  the  One” ;  so  Proclus  ascends  to 
the  selfless  essence  of  God,  the  One  before  all  who 
is  also  the  One  in  all,  and  is  the  realization  and  per¬ 
fection  of  the  Circle  of  Being.  Even  in  the  new 
world  the  metaphysically  minded  Aztecs  adumbrate 
the  conception :  for  above  their  daemonic  pantheon, 
Tezcatlipoca  personates  the  transcendent  yet  imma¬ 
nent  creator: 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  133 


O  puissant  Lord,  under  whose  wings  we  seek  protection  and 
shelter,  thou  art  invisible  and  impalpable  as  air  and  night  1 

O  our  very  good  Lord,  who  castest  thy  shadow  about  all 
who  approach  thee,  even  as  a  tree  tall  and  great,  thou  art  in¬ 
visible  and  impalpable  and  thy  glance  penetrateth  the  rocks  and 
to  the  heart  of  trees,  beholding  all  that  is  there  concealed.  It 
is  for  this  that  thou  seest  and  understandest  that  which  is  in 
our  hearts  and  in  our  thoughts.  Before  thee  our  souls  are  as 
a  film  of  smoke  or  of  fog  vanishing  from  the  earth  1 

The  conception,  explicit  or  implicit,  occurs  thus 
in  many  non-Christian  contexts,  but  with  this  sig¬ 
nificant  difference :  that  in  these  diverse  thought 
media  it  is  almost  invariably  an  accompaniment  of 
pessimism.  This  is  obvious  enough  in  India :  life 
is  one  perpetual  degeneration  from  the  pure  being 
of  Brahm,  and  the  acme  of  bliss  is  the  soul's  utter 
submergence  in  the  impersonal  indifference  of  the 
One.  It  is  no  less  obvious  with  the  later  Platonists. 
Plato  himself,  with  an  almost  shifty  adroitness,  after 
stating,  in  the  Timceits,  that  God,  in  his  goodness, 
patterned  the  world  after  the  perfect  pattern  of  his 
own  being,  ‘Tor  the  deeds  of  the  best  could  never 
be  or  have  been  other  than  the  fairest,"  goes  on  to 
apologize  for  the  world's  imperfections  on  the  score 
that  the  deity  turned  over  the  details  of  creation  to 
lesser  hands.  It  was  inevitable  that  disciples  of  his 
philosophy,  fallen  upon  evil  days,  should  have  con¬ 
verted  this  into  a  doctrine  of  progressive  descent, 
of  creative  degeneration,  such  as  indeed  we  find  in 
that  Neo-Platonic  pessimism  which  so  mirrors  that 
of  India  that  we  are  accustomed  to  see  in  it  a  bor¬ 
rowing  from  the  Orient. 

But  I  believe  that  when  we  note  how  similar 
conceptions  in  America  seem  to  lead  to  a  similar 
pessimism,  our  conviction  that  the  conception  is 


Aztec 

prayer 


Plato’s 

Demiurge 


10 


134 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


New  and 
Old  World 
pessimism 


Evolution 

and 

optimism 


itself  author  of  the  pessimism  will  gain  strength. 
For  the  Aztec  betrays  a  sophisticated  world-weari- 
ness  worthy  of  disciples  of  Schopenhauer.  When 
a  child  was  born  into  the  world  it  was  addressed: 

You  are  come  into  a  world  where  your  parents  live  mid  toils 
and  fatigues,  where  there  are  broiling  heats  and  windy  chills, 
where  there  is  neither  pleasure  nor  contentment,  for  it  is  a 
place  of  labors,  of  torments,  and  of  cares. 

And  even  of  a  dead  king  they  could  only  pray: 

Thou  hast  given  him  to  taste  in  this  world  a  few  of  the 
sweetnesses  and  suavities  which  thou  hast  made  to  pass  before 
his  eyes  like  will-o’-wisps  which  vanish  in  being  born. 

Pessimism,  then,  seems  to  have  been  the  natural 
accompaniment  of  this  conception  of  an  immanent 
and  transcendent  God  in  all  centuries  save  the  nine¬ 
teenth.  '  How  are  we  to  account  for  the  new  value 
which  this  century  has  placed  upon  the  conception? 

The  answer  is  complex. 

Historically  the  nineteenth  century  is  heritor  of 
eighteenth  century  optimism.  The  naturalism  of 
the  eighteenth  century  was  a  reaction  against  the 
pessimism  of  the  earlier  ascetic  Christianity;  its 
mood  was  one  of  contentment  with  nature  and  its 
moral  a  readiness  to  accept  and  find  good  nature’s 
self-revelation.  The  doctrine  of  evolution  in  the 
nineteenth  century  seemed  to  be  this  revelation:  it 
seemed  to  mean  progressive  realization  of  the  good. 
The  conditions  of  modern  life  have  favored  this 
interpretation,  and  philosophy  and  theology  alike 
have  been  caught  in  its  optimistic  swing.  Hegel,  it 
has  been  said,  gives  us  in  his  dialectic  evolution  the 
inner  interpretation  of  what  Spencer  interprets  out¬ 
wardly:  the  two  systems  are  complementary  narra¬ 
tives  of  world-progress. 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  135 


With  the  historical  pressure  all  toward  optimism, 
it  is  no  marvel  that  logic  (ever  an  accommodating 
servant)  easily  adapts  itself  to  the  push  of  circum¬ 
stance.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  adaptation 
is  not  strained.  The  dialectic  deduction  of  nature 
from  God  must,  to  be  sure,  be  regarded  as  a  descent 
— as  Platonist,  Gnostic  and  Hindu  have  regarded 
it — so  long  as  your  thinker  maintains  the  cosmic, 
the  ontological  point  of  departure;  but  if  instead 
his  thinking  start  from  human  powers  of  knowing, 
if  his  deduction  be  from  the  psychology  of  human 
reasoning,  first  analyzed  and  then  inductively  gen¬ 
eralized  as  a  predicate  of  the  universe,  then  the 
process  is  legitimately  interpreted  as  an  ascent,  an 
evolution.  And  this  is  precisely  what  German  tran¬ 
scendentalism  has  done.  Kant  psychologized  meta¬ 
physics;  and  in  the  hands  of  the  philosophers  of 
the  absolute,  especially  Hegel,  human  thought- 
processes  were  treated  as  epitome  and  mirror  of 
the  being  of  the  world.  The  starting-point  was 
humanistic  and  hence  the  goal  of  perfection  was 
found  to  be  an  implication  of  human  nature,  emerg¬ 
ing  from  human  nature  by  a  smooth  and  felicitous 
progression. 

To  be  sure,  in  so  far  as  this  progression  was 
withdrawn  from  time  we  have  as  the  fond  of  this 
reasoning  the  unhappy  quibble  of  timeless  change, 
an  antinomy  of  points  of  view  (the  human  and  the 
absolute)  that  to  the  lay  mind  is  insoluble,  but  this 
difficulty  is  one  readily  concealed  by  cloudy  words, 
for  the  and  fieOe^L^  of  Plato  are  terms  descrip¬ 

tive  of  a  no  more  irreconcilable  conciliation  than 
are  the  “transfusion,”  “transmutation,”  and  “tran¬ 
scendency”  of  the  Absolutists. 


Facile 

logic 


German 

idealism 


Cloudy 

words 


136 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Protestant 

attitudes 


Asiatic 

influence 


The  poets 


But  history  urged  and  logic  admitted  optimism, 
and  the  times  had  need  of  a  new  conception  of  God. 
There  remains  but  to  ask  how  far  this  conception 
answers  the  needs  of  its  generation. 

Now  there  are  undoubtedly  some  thousands  of 
Protestant  clergymen  who,  with  the  more  informed 
of  their  laity,  hold  and  find  comfort  in  the  tran- 
scendentalist  idea  of  God.  But  I  regard  it  as  unde¬ 
niable  that  the  mass,  even  of  enlightened  Protes¬ 
tantism,  is  still  in  the  Reformation,  or  at  most  is 
not  beyond  the  eighteenth  century,  whereas  Catholi¬ 
cism,  as  we  know,  is  still  assertively  Mediaeval.  Un¬ 
churched  Christendom  is  in  the  main  eighteenth 
century.  On  the  other  hand,  by  underground  chan¬ 
nels — Theosophy,  New  Thought,  Christian  Science 
— -Asiatic  philosophy  is  undoubtedly  inflowing  to 
an  ever-rising  flood.  The  assimilation  of  transcen- 
dentalist  ideas  seems  to  show  more  vitality  outside 
than  inside  orthodoxy. 

But  what  of  the  intellectual  leadership- — the 
thought  of  the  best  minds? 

Here  we  have  no  right  to  turn  to  philosophers; 
it  is  philosophy  that  we  are  judging.  But  we  have 
a  right  to  turn  to  the  poets,  for  the  poetry  for  which 
any  generation  cares  is  just  index  of  the  spiritual 
development  of  that  generation.  And  judged  by 
this  standard  of  poetry,  I  think  we  can  say  that, 
in  the  English-speaking  world  at  least,  transcen¬ 
dentalism  has  failed.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
it  has  failed  to  command  belief — that  were  a  rash 
and  hasty  judgment;  nor  yet  that  it  has  failed  to 
bring  a  certain  elegiac  comfort  into  many  lives. 
But  just  here  is  my  point:  the  comfort  that  it  has 
brought  is  elegiac;  it  is  the  comfort  of  resignation. 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  137 


Transcendentalism  has  failed  to  preserve  optimism 
even  with  the  advantage  of  the  tremendous  opti¬ 
mistic  momentum  which  had  been  given  by  eight¬ 
eenth-century  French  humanitarianism  and  English 
naturalism. 

The  elegiac  tone  of  modern  poetry  is  too  con¬ 
spicuous  to  need  much  illustration.  Yet  in  a  certain 
instance  there  is  indicated  a  trend  so  significant  that 
I  can  not  refrain  from  pointing  it.  Two  of  the  most 
widely  read  of  modern  English  poems  appeared 
within  a  decade  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury.  The  first  to  appear  and  the  first  to  take  and 
hold  the  sympathy  of  the  modern  mood  was  Tenny¬ 
son’s  In  Memoriam.  It  is  a  poem  which,  perhaps 
best  of  all,  voices  the  elegiacism  of  the  Victorian 
epoch :  the  mingling  of  wistful  faith  and  material 
doubt,  of  passionate  optimistic  hope  and  dread  of 
compelling  pessimism.  The  immanent  and  transcen¬ 
dent  God  is  there,  the  God  far-off  and  perfect,  who 
transforms  the  compelling  evil  of  experience  into 
some  final  blessing — 

O  yet  we  trust  that  somehow  good 
Will  be  the  final  goal  of  ill  .  .  . 

and  the  evolutional  ascent  is  there,  but  the  upward- 
straining  mortal  vision  descries  only  a  mounting 
gloom  betwixt  humanity  and  God;  the  heaviness  of 
doubt  outbalances  the  buoyancy  of  faith : 

I  falter  where  I  firmly  trod, 

And  falling  with  my  weight  of  cares 
Upon  the  great  world’s  altar-stairs 

That  slope  through  darkness  up  to  God, 

I  stretch  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  grope, 

And  gather  dust  and  chaff,  and  call 
To  what  I  feel  is  Lord  of  all, 

And  faintly  trust  the  larger  hope. 


Elegiac 

tone 


In 

Memoriam 


138 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Rubaiyat 
of  Omar 
Khayyam 


Emperor- 

God 


This  is  the  first  of  the  two  poems,  read  and  re¬ 
read  for  a  generation.  The  second,  composed  a 
ten-year  later,  after  lying  almost  unknown  for  a 
generation,  is  now,  I  venture  to  guess,  read  a  hun¬ 
dred  times  to  the  once  of  In  Memoriam,  and  quoted 
thrice  a  hundred.  And  yet  the  Rubaiyat  of  Fitz¬ 
Gerald’s  Omar  owns  not  even  the  lame  faith  of 
Tennyson.  It  is  pessimistic  to  the  core,  shot 
through  with  the  impotence  and  pain  of  hopeless¬ 
ness.  As  a  man,  the  best  that  Omar  can  offer  is  a 
Cyrenaic  advice  to  snare  the  pleasures  of  an  evanes¬ 
cent  sensation,  to  banish  thought  in  joyless  laughter, 
and  to  meet  death  with  Stoic  dignity — 

So  when  the  Angel  of  the  darker  Drink 
At  last  shall  find  you  by  the  river-brink, 

And,  offering  his  Cup,  invite  your  Soul 
Forth  to  your  Lips  to  quaff — you  shall  not  shrink. 

And  as  to  God,  his  best  is  an  indifference  that  is 
akin  to  blasphemy: 

O  Thou,  who  Man  of  baser  Earth  didst  make. 

And  ev’n  with  Paradise  devise  the  Snake : 

For  all  the  Sin  wherewith  the  Face  of  Man 
Is  blacken’d — Man’s  forgiveness  give — and  take  1 

Surely  the  captivation  in  which  this  poem  holds 
the  modern  mood  betrays  the  utter  bankruptcy  of 
transcendental  optimism ! 

V 

In  our  running  review  we  have  traced  the  develop¬ 
ment  of  a  great  conception,  that  of  a  being  whose 
character  is  at  once  perfect  truth  and  perfect  good¬ 
ness  and  perfect  beauty.  At  the  outset  this  being 
is  an  Emperor-God,  throned  above  a  world  which 
is  his  foot-stool ;  at  the  end  the  being  is  the  veritable 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  139 

anima  mundi  regarded  as  the  saving  transfigura¬ 
tion  of  a  blotched  and  blemished  world  of  expe¬ 
rience. 

At  the  outset  the  truth  and  goodness  and  beauty 
of  God  could  be  made  to  seem  at  least  imaginatively 
consistent  with  the  falsities  and  evils  and  ugliness 
of  life  owing  to  the  dramatic  separation  of  creator 
and  creation,  of  king  and  kingdom,  of  judge  and 
judged.  At  the  end  we  find  the  vividness  of  expe¬ 
rience  is  too  blindingly  real  to  permit  the  mind  to 
perceive  and  hold  those  logical  subtleties  which  seek 
to  eliminate  sin  and  error  merely  by  putting  a  new 
face  on  a  sullied  universe:  the  transcendental  out¬ 
look  may  mean  salvation,  but  it  is  not  the  salvation 
for  which  a  sick  and  distressful  humanity  yearns. 

Is  the  conception  of  God,  then — the  Christian 
conception — ^bankrupt?  Is  there  no  counsel  for  a 
feverish  and  distempered  age  save  the  sparge  rosas 
of  a  Horace,  no  solace  save  an  Omar’s  pitiful  flyt- 
ings  with  Fate? 

Frankly,  the  orthodox  conception,  whether  He¬ 
braic,  deistic,  or  transcendental,  in  so  far  as  it  rests 
upon  the  metaphysical  trinitarianism  which  unites 
in  the  divine  person  all  the  goodness  and  beauty 
and  truth  of  the  world,  making  these  the  world’s 
whole  truth — frankly,  this  conception  is  bankrupt. 
It  runs  against  the  grain  of  experience,  and  however 
easy  it  is  for  human  nature  to  hold  to  faiths  that 
are  contrary  to  reason,  it  is  impossible  for  it  long 
to  continue  in  beliefs  that  cross  the  testimony  of 
eyes  and  ears  and  inquisitive  fingers :  even  the  doubt¬ 
ing  Thomas  was  convinced  of  his  Lord’s  beatific 
being  by  the  touch  of  his  grievous  corporeal  wounds. 

But  the  orthodox  conception  is  by  no  means  the 


Anima 

Mundi 


Meta¬ 

physical 

orthodoxy 

bankrupt 


140 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Persian 

dualism 


God 

as  Hero 


Man 

as  soldier 


only  possible,  nor  even  the  only  Christian,  concep¬ 
tion  of  the  divine  nature.  Along  with  Hebrew  and 
Greek,  Persian  doctrines  entered  into  the  making 
of  Christianity.  Historically,  to  be  sure,  Mani- 
chaean  dualism  has  always  been  heresy — orthodox 
Christianity  would  none  of  it — ^but  the  tale  of  his¬ 
tory  is  yet  in  the  telling,  and  in  the  modern  reversion 
to  Omar’s  keen  Persian  sense  of  a  twy-bladed  living 
we  seem  to  find  the  heresy  resurgent,  as  ever  it  must 
be  so  long  as  experience  itself  is  Manichaean. 

In  its  essence  the  Manichaean  conception  is  this: 
The  universe  is  an  interweave  of  good  and  evil,  of 
ugliness  and  beauty.  Truth  is  no  attribute  of  a 
part  of  these  qualities,  denied  of  the  other  parts; 
the  powers  of  darkness  are  as  real  as  the  powers  of 
light :  they  are  genuine  powers,  capable  of  designing 
and  wreaking  ill.  And  God  is  no  embodiment  of 
truth’s  totality;  rather  he  is  all  goodness  and  beauty, 
the  leader  of  the  powers  of  light  against  the  powers 
of  darkness  in  a  struggle  that  is  eternal. 

God,  on  this  view,  is  neither  all-knowing  nor  all- 
powerful.  The  struggle  in  which  he  is  engaged — 
the  struggle  which  appears  to  us  as  the  evolution 
of  the  world,  as  the  dramatic  action  of  creation — 
is  no  illusory,  theatrical  struggle;  it  is  a  real  and 
tense  conflict  in  which  each  combatant,  the  good 
and  the  evil,  must  be  eternally  vigilant  or  eternally 
overcome. 

The  part  of  man  in  this  struggle  is  heroic.  Man 
is  placed  by  his  creator  in  the  van  of  the  conflict 
against  the  powers  of  cosmic  night,  and  placed  there 
because  there  is  real  and  urgent  need  of  human 
prowess  in  the  fight.  It  is  the  post  of  honor  and 
of  danger,  and  the  reward  of  valiancy  and  fortitude 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  141 


is  the  glory  of  conquest  over  the  enemy  of  God 
and  man. 

In  the  Hebrew  view,  man  is  the  creature  and 
servitor  of  his  all-powerful  Lord  and  King.  It  is 
no  human  part  to  lift  pretending  eyes  to  the  awful 
majesty  of  the  divine  ruler  or  curiously  strive  to 
pierce  the  veil  of  immensity  which  dimly  magnifies 
the  huge  and  distant  seat  of  the  Almighty:  ‘‘He 
holdeth  back  the  face  of  his  throne  and  spreadeth 
his  cloud  upon  it.”  In  the  Persian  view,  on  the 
other  hand,  man  is  the  comrade  and  helper  of  God. 
Even  Khayyam,  though  the  pall  of  Moslem  fatalism 
had  robbed  this  partnership  of  its  militant  spirit, 
yet  feels  in  a  wistful,  hypothetic  mood  the  tug  of 
its  friendly  humanism : 

Ah,  Love !  could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  Scheme  of  Things  entire, 

Would  we  not  shatter  it  to  bits — and  then 
Remould  it  nearer  to  the  Heart’s  Desire? 

“Could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire  !  ”  .  .  .  The 
strength  of  this  humanistic  heresy  lies  just  in  the 
fact  that  “you  and  I”  are  valued  and  needed  part¬ 
ners  in  his  combat  with  evil  and  ugliness.  Man  is 
given  a  doughty  and  dignified  position  in  “the 
Scheme  of  Things,”  and  because  God  himself  owns 
his  need  of  man  the  divine  wisdom  and  beauty  be¬ 
come  object  of  a  chivalrous  and  devoted  love  rather 
than  of  a  prostrate  adoration. 

This  is  humanism — a  philosophy  and  theology  of 
experience  as  we  know  and  name  experience  in  the 
chance  and  change  of  every-day  living,  experience 
raw  and  fresh  and  untransmuted.  It  is  true  to  life. 
It  is  not  untrue  to  religion.  Is  it  false  to  logic? 
I  believe  not. 


The  seat 
of  the 
Almighty 


The  Scheme 
of  Things 


142 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Truths  are 
moral  and 
(Esthetic 


Politics 

1323a 


Near  the  beginning  of  this  essay  I  said  that  the 
identification  of  all  truth  with  the  goodness  and 
beauty  of  God  could  not  have  satisfied  human  reason 
save  for  the  duplicitous  meaning  of  the  measures 
of  truth,  the  duplicity  of  a  goodness  that  is  in  part 
beauty  and  in  part  something  other  than  beauty. 
Let  us  ask  more  narrowly  after  the  relationship  of 
these  ideas. 

The  values  of  truth — and  by  this  I  mean  the 
qualities  of  realities  which  make  them  seem  worth 
while  to  human  living — are  of  two  sorts :  they  are 
moral  and  they  are  cesthetic.  No  matter  which 
standard  we  are  concerned  with,  the  desirable  truths, 
the  realities  that  do  seem  worth  while,  we  call  the 
Good.  “The  Good,”  says  Aristotle,  “is  that  at  which 
all  things  aim”;  and  Plato  before  him,  as  I  have 
already  quoted,  has  defined  the  Good  as  “that  for 
the  sake  of  which  something  else  is  done,”  as  an 
end  of  action. 

Now  for  expediency  in  talk  we  may  be  justified 
in  speaking  of  custom  and  convenance,  of  merely 
moral  conduct,  as  good;  but  it  is  certainly  not  a 
good  in  this  teleological  sense.  Goodness  in  con¬ 
duct  is  a  means,  not  an  end ;  it  is  social  facilitation, 
but  society  exists  for  something  other  than  mere 
smooth  running.  To  quote  Aristotle  yet  again: 
“He  who  would  duly  enquire  about  the  best  form 
of  a  state  ought  first  to  determine  which  is  -the 
most  eligible  life”;  for  “the  end  of  individuals  and 
of  states  is  the  same,”  viz.,  the  ideal  life;  and  “the 
good  man  as  such  is  the  measure  of  everything.-” 
In  other  words,  moral  goodness  is  good  only  as  an 
instrument  to  ideal  living,  in  which  alone  is  the 
truth  of  goodness. 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH 


143 


And  this  ideal  living,  does  it  represent  a  value 
that  is  moral  in  some  other  than  the  root  meaning 
of  ‘'moral, ”  as  designating  the  mutual  concession 
which  makes  human  intercourse  possible,  or  does  it 
represent  a  value  that  is  properly  to  be  termed 
“sesthetic”  ?  I  regard  the  latter  view  as  the  feasible 
one.  For  if  we  look  at  human  ideals  of  life’s  value 
in  the  broadest  mode,  I  see  but  three  types  of  expe¬ 
rience  that  stand  out  as  goals,  proximate  or  ulti¬ 
mate,  of  men’s  conscious  endeavor.  There  is,  first, 
happiness ;  there  is,  second,  mystic  union  with 
divinity;  there  is,  third,  the  zest  of  creative  en¬ 
deavor.  Now  all  three  of  these  are  types  of  expe¬ 
rience,  of  cesthesis,  of  realization  rather  than  of 
preparation.  They  are  in  each  case  the  end  and 
object  of  moral  conduct,  and  in  themselves  are  non- 
moral.  Each  is  properly  aesthetic,  though  of  course 
it  is  doing  violence  to  our  common  speech  to  infer 
that  each  thereby  involves  an  ideal  of  beauty.  But 
let  us  consider  them  case  by  case. 

The  ideal  of  happiness  may  be  (1)  mere  sensuous 
delight,  the  Cyrenaic’s  lustful  indulgence  of  percep¬ 
tion  and  appetite;  it  is  that  pleasure  for  the  power 
of  which,  says  Plato,  your  noble  nature  feels  “an 
instinctive  repugnance  and  extreme  detestation.” 
Again  (2)  happiness  may  mean,  as  Aristotle  would 
have  it,  “virtuous  activity,”  but  Aristotle  reasons 
in  a  circle,  for  “virtue”  is  for  him  “human  excel¬ 
lence,”  and  his  whole  eudaemonism  resolves  vir¬ 
tue  into  an  undefined  “right  living”  :  ayaOov  is  in 
evSaLfxovLa^  eiSaLfiovia  is  in  aperr},  whence  ayaOov  is  in 
aperr),  it  is  a  fruitless  quest.  Finally  (3)  happiness 
may  mean  supersensuous  ecstasy,  be  it  the  intoxica¬ 
tion  of  thought  or  the  bliss  of  beatific  vision.  If 


Three 
goals  of 
conscious 
endeavor 


n) 

Happines 


144 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


(2) 

Mysticism 


(3)  . 

Creative 

activity 


happiness  have  any  other  meaning  than  these  three, 
then  it  is  an  incident  and  not  an  end  of  conduct. 

Now  the  third  of  these  meanings  I  take  to  be 
identical  with  that  ideal  of  mystic  union  which  re¬ 
gards  such  union  as  a  state  of  conscious  felicity. 
For  mystic  union  may,  of  course,  be  of  the  Oriental, 
pessimistic  type — an  “absorption”  which  is  no  more 
nor  less  than  annihilation.  But  if  annihilation  is 
not  meant,  if  what  is  meant  be  a  state  of  unalloyed 
and  unaffected  bliss,  then  we  are  back  to  the  para- 
disal  ideal  of  orthodox  Christianity,  and  this  ideal 
I  have  maintained  is  out  of  the  modern  temper. 

I  do  not  question  that  some  men  may  find  their 
life’s  ideal  in  the  most  material  Cyrenaicism.  I  do 
not  doubt  that  many  ascetic  souls  have  sold  the  hap¬ 
piness  of  this  life  for  felicity  in  a  life  to  come, 
or  that  many  saintly  ones  have  found  in  this  life 
moments  of  bliss  that  have  effaced  for  them  all 
sense  of  life’s  encompassing  evils.  But  I  do  affirm 
that  for  the  normal  mind  of  our  period  such  ideals 
are  impossible  as  the  true  and  universal  measures 
of  goodness. 

There  remains,  then,  but  the  one  other  form  of 
cesthesis,  the  truly  aesthetic  zest  of  creative  endeavor. 
This  is  truly  aesthetic  because  it  identifies,  as  Plato 
was  ever  instinctively  identifying,  the  good  and  the 
beautiful.  The  essence  of  the  ideal  has  ever  been 
beauty,  in  so  far  as  the  ideal  has  affected  human 
conduct:  it  is  the  state  not  yet  realized,  but  chal¬ 
lenging  the  effort  to  realization,  the  pattern  which, 
because  it  is  an  ever-recessive  pattern,  is  ever-divine, 
whose  actualization  is  the  motive  and  the  despair 
and  hence  the  life  of  an  evolving  world.  In  the 
light  of  our  meager  achievements  imagination  charts 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  145 


mighty  conquests  of  the  domain  of  darkness,  pat¬ 
terning  empires  of  wonder  peopled  by  forms  lovely 
and  divine,  while  beyond  them  and  beyond  in  the 
bowels  of  the  cosmic  gloom,  dimly  emergent,  yet 
nobler  gods  uprear  Titanic  forms. 

Life  is  action.  Action  is  condemnation  of  the 
present  reality  for  the  sake  of  the  ideal.  We  live 
in  our  idealizations,  which  is  to  say  that  we  live 
in  the  conquering  endeavor  of  an  ever-creative 
world.  For  a  living  God  as  for  living  men  there 
are  beauties  to  be  attained  and  there  are  imperfec¬ 
tions  to  be  overcome.  This  is  Manichaeism,  and  it 
is  the  philosophy  of  evolution  as  evolution  is  man¬ 
ifested  to  us  in  mortal  experience. 

VI 

Passing  from  the  consideration  of  the  Good  to 
that  of  its  opposite,  we  find,  I  believe,  that  the 
Manichsean  view  is  the  only  one  that  gives  us  a 
square  and  downright  solution  of  the  problem  of 
evil.  Evils  are  of  four  sorts :  immorality,  sin,  pain, 
and  ugliness.  Each  of  these,  on  the  view  taken,  is 
as  genuine  a  reality  as  is  its  opposite.  By  naming 
bad  conduct  immorality  we  do  not  make  it  mere 
absence  of  good  conduct;  by  calling  evils  defects 
and  imperfections  we  do  not  transform  them  into 
mere  privatives  of  the  good;  they  are  genuine  and 
forceful  and  creative  in  their  own  rights.  We  are 
honest  with  experience,  accepting  its  several  testi¬ 
monies  at  their  face  values. 

And  in  the  case  of  the  bad,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
good,  we  make  distinctions.  Immorality,  for  exam¬ 
ple,  resolves  into  inexpediency;  evil  between  man 
and  man  is  hindrance  of  the  good  life;  it  must 


Life  is 
action 


Problem 
of  evil 


Immorality 


146 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Sin 


Pain  and 
ugliness 


be  dealt  with  as  a  problem  and  not  as  a  calamity, 
cosmic  and  overpowering. 

Further,  it  lies  between  man  and  man  and  not 
between  man  and  God.  For  the  evil  that  obtains 
between  man  and  God  we  have  another  name — sin. 
If  sin  be  a  social  transgression,  after  the  analogy 
of  our  transgressions  against  mankind,  then  we 
have  in  it  but  a  special  case  of  immorality.  But 
by  sin  we  mean  something  more  than  this,  some¬ 
thing  that  comes  home  to  the  transgressor;  sin  is 
a  breaking  of  troth  with  one’s  own  and  acknow¬ 
ledged  ideals;  it  is  a  denial  of  idealization,  a  denial 
of  life,  and  its  inevitable  wage  is  death.  To  is 
to  violate  the  noble  and  outrage  the  divine  in  hun:an 
nature. 

Immorality,  then,  is  inexpediency,  human  inex¬ 
pediency,  and  it  is  bad  because  it  hurts  the  chances 
of  ideal  living.  It  is  not  a  relation  that  holds 
between  man  and  God,  and  we  have  no  right  to 
ask,  and  make  no  sense  in  asking,  that  God  be 
moral:  “How  should  a  man  be  just  with  God?” 
But  that  which  outrages  the  ideal,  that  which  is 
treasonable  to  the  good,  that  is  sin,  and  of  that 
God  takes  account. 

Of  the  two  objective  phases  of  the  bad,  pain  and 
ugliness,  we  can  make  similar  division.  For  ugli¬ 
ness  is  the  very  denial  of  ideal  living;  it  is  evil 
made  into  a  goal  and  an  end ;  it  is  the  utter  thwart¬ 
ing  of  that  beauty  which  is  the  spur  of  man’s  em 
deavor.  Pain,  on  the  other  hand,  is  but  a  condition 
of  struggle,  a  condition,  even,  of  nobility  and  ideality 
and  of  the  being  of  beauty  itself.  “There  are  com¬ 
binations  of  pleasure  and  pain  in  lamentations,” 
says  Plato,  “and  in  tragedy  and  comedy,  not  only 


i 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  147 


on  the  stage,  but  on  the  greater  stage  of  human 
life.” 

In  ugliness  and  sin,  therefore,  are  given  the  meas¬ 
ures  of  the  truth  of  badness  in  the  universe,  whereas 
pain  which  is  a  symptom  of  a  striving  world-nature, 
and  faulty  endeavor  which  is  a  symptom  of  striving 
human  nature,  are  signs  of  life  and  of  an  up-strug¬ 
gling  mind;  they  are  token  of  cosmic  health,  if 
health  means  progress. 

Some  of  the  sorriest  muddles  in  which  human 
thinking  has  been  embogged  have  been  the  conse¬ 
quence  of  confusion  of  the  instrumental  and  the 
final  goods  and  bads  of  experience.  We  have  sadly 
over-strained  our  adjectives  in  applying  ‘"good”  and 
“bad”  to  so  diverse  contrasts.  A  shrewd  instance 
is  Milton’s  nobly  infernal  Satan  throned  in  hell, 

by  merit  raised 
To  that  bad  eminence. 

Indeed,  Milton’s  whole  purpose  comes  precious  near 
fiasco  from  the  very  fact  that  Satan’s  sin  is  mainly 
immorality,  whereas  his  Titanic  revolt  against  Om¬ 
nipotence  is  in  itself  beautiful.  For  what  makes 
beauty  in  human  character  is  never  its  morality,  but 
always  its  nobility,  and  it  is  therefore  not  wonderful 
that  the  theologian  should  have  lost  to  the  poet,  for 
the  poet’s  insight  was  the  true  one. 

The  whole  error  of  asceticism  has  lain  just  here. 
In  its  effort  to  avoid  the  inexpediencies  of  life  it  has 
denied  the  possibility  of  beautiful  living.  The  theo¬ 
logical  result  is  a  fearful  dichotomy  of  existence : 
a  wallowing  in  ugliness  here  below  for  the  sake  of 
a  safe  and  tame  paradise  hereafter.  When  I  was 
in  my  sixth  or  seventh  year  I  had  a  dream  which 
so  stung  my  conscience  that  its  memory  has  re- 


Measures 
of  badness 


Satan 


Error  of 
asceticism 


148 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


A  dream 


Aucassin 

and 

Nicolete 


mained  ever  fresh.  In  my  dream  I  thought  that 
the  choice  of  heaven  or  hell  was  placed  before  me. 
Heaven,  as  I  saw  it,  was  full  of  silvery  clouds  and 
silvery-winged  harpers  and  there  was  a  great  light 
in  its  midst  which  was  the  throne  of  God,  and  it  was 
reached  by  three  little  wooden  stairs.  Hell  was  a 
battlemented  castle  rising  from  a  bottomless  gloom, 
yet  below  where  I  stood  so  that  I  could  look  over 
into  it.  Now  in  my  dream  I  knew  that  I  ought  to 
choose  heaven,  but  I  looked  down  into  hell  once, 
and  twice,  and  thrice,  and  I  saw  in  it  braziers  of 
burning  fire,  and  demons  black  and  red  and  demons 
winged  and  demons  in  the  shapes  of  fantastic  and 
monstrous  beasts,  and  I  saw  there  a  tall  knight  clad 
all  in  sable  armor  ....  and  in  my  dream  I  chose 
hell. 

In  this  dream  the  troublesome  “ought”  that  lay 
Upon  my  conscience  was  moral ;  the  choice  was 
aesthetic  and  instinctive.  In  the  tale  of  Aucassin 
and  Nicolete,  Aucassin  answers  the  threat  of  hell 
in  this  wise : 

In  Paradise  what  have  I  to  win?  Therein  I  seek  not  to 
enter,  but  only  to  have  Nicolete,  my  sweet  lady  that  I  love  so 
well.  For  into  Paradise  go  none  but  such  folk  as  I  shall  tell 
thee  now:  Thither  go  these  same  old  priests,  the  halt  old  men 
and  maimed,  who  all  day  and  night  cower  continually  before 
the  altars  and  in  the  crypts;  and  such  folk  as  wear  old  amices 
and  old  clouted  frocks,  and  naked  folk  and  shoeless,  and  cov¬ 
ered  with  sores,  perishing  of  hunger  and  thirst,  and  of  cold, 
and  of  little  ease.  These  be  they  that  go  into  Paradise,  and 
with  them  have  I  naught  to  make.  But  into  Hell  would  I  fain 
go ;  for  into  Hell  fare  the  goodly  clerks,  and  goodly  knights 
that  fall  in  tourneys  and  great  wars,  and  stout  men  at  arms, 
and  all  men  noble.  With  these  would  I  liefly  go.  And  thither 
pass  the  sweet  ladies  and  courteous  that  have  two  lovers,  or 
three,  and  their  lords  also  thereto.  Thither  goes  the  gold,  and 
the  silver,  and  cloth  of  vair,  and  cloth  of  gris,  and  harpers  and 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  149 


makers,  and  the  prince  of  this  world.  With  these  would  I 
gladly  go,  let  me  but  have  with  me  Nicolete,  my  sweetest  lady.^ 

Between  the  tame  felicities  of  an  ascetic’s  para¬ 
dise  and  the  red  and  burning  magnificence  of  hell 
there  is  but  one  choice,  and  that  the  Pagan  choice. 
Between  a  world  without  suffering  and  a  world 
without  nobility  we  can  not  hesitate.  And  I  think 
there  is  no  more  terrible — ^because  none  so  human — 
arraignment  of  the  God  of  the  theologians  than  in 
the  fifth  canto  of  the  Divine  Comedy: 

Se  fosse  amico  il  Re  dell’  universo, 

Noi  pregheremmo  lui  per  la  tua  pace, 

Poiche  hai  pieta  del  nostro  mal  perverso, 

Francesca  is  infinitely  nobler  than  the  Most  Catholic 
King  of  the  Universe,  infinitely  nobler  than  the  God 
who  has  punished  her;  and  so,  in  the  face  of  that 
infinite  justice  he  is  sent  to  uphold,  the  poet  justifies 
her: 

Amor,  die  a  nullo  amato  amar  perdona, 

Mi  prese  del  costui  piacer  si  forte, 

Che,  come  vedi,  ancor  non  mi  abbandona. 

Her  human  love  survives  triumphant  mid  the  tor¬ 
ments  of  hell,  and  it  ennobles  hell,  and  it  glorifies 
hell. 

Surely  it  is  no  light  fact  that  the  lasting  appeal 
of  every  great  religion  has  been  its  humanism  and 
its  heroism.  It  is  not  the  distant  perfections  of 
God,  but  the  near  glow  of  the  divine  in  the  human, 
of  the  dizinity  humanized,  that  has  drawn  and  held 
the  hearts  of  men.  This  is  wonderfully  shown  in 
the  great  religious  dramatic  poems.  In  the  Pro¬ 
metheus  of  ^schylus  the  powerful  and  vengeful 
Zeus  is  forever  ugly;  it  is  for  the  Titan,  punished 


1  Andrew  Bang’s  translation. 


Francesca 
da  Rimini 


Prometheus 


11 


150 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Sublime 

defeat 


Suffering 

Saviors 


because  he  “loved  men  overmuch,”  that  the  tragedy 
awakens  a  noble  and  enduring  pity.  In  Job  it 
is  the  colossal  faith  of  the  patriarch,  “though  he 
slay  me  yet  will  I  trust  him,”  rather  than  the  con¬ 
duct  of  a  deity  who  makes  of  his  servant  a  sport 
and  a  spectacle,  that  renders  the  book  so  passionately 
and  so  grievously  human.  And  in  Milton’s  epic 
the  shudder  with  which  we  see  paid  the  grim  wage 
of  the  heaven-fallen  rout — 

Sublime  with  expectation  when  to  see 

In  triumph  issuing  forth  their  glorious  Chief ; 

They  saw,  but  other  sight  instead,  a  crowd 

Of  ugly  Serpents, — 

this  shudder  at  least  shares  their  “horrid  sympathy.” 
In  each  case,  Prometheus  against  Zeus,  Job  against 
Jehovah,  Satan  against  the  Almighty,  it  is  the  mor¬ 
tal  heroism  of  the  creature  rather  than  the  immortal 
might  of  the  Creator  that  Urges  in  our  breasts  its 
answering  passion. 

From  the  beginning  the  element  in  religion  that 
has  appealed  most  potently  to  mankind  has  been 
the  struggle  against  evil,  the  struggle  after  good. 
And  the  heroes  of  religion  have  been  the  doughty 
leaders  of  this  struggle,  have  been-  the  saviors  of 
men.  Orpheus  and  Mithras  and  Mani,  Moses  and 
Mohammed,  Buddha  and  Christ,  all  these  have  been 
heroic  leaders  of  heroic  men  in  conflict  with  an  en¬ 
compassing  and  powerful  worker  of  ill.  Salvation, 
to  be  felt  as  real,  must  be  felt  as  a  rescue  from  a 
real  and  terrible  danger,  and  the  savior,  to  be  a  hero 
among  the  saved,  must  perform  his  labor  at  a  peril 
and  a  cost.  Omnipotence  and  omniscience  are  out 
of  place  in  the  drama  of  redemption,  and  so  the 
hero  of  this  drama  is  never  the  all-powerful  and 


GOODNESS  AND  BEAUTY  OF  TRUTH  151 


all-wise  creator,  but  always  his  human  and  suffering 
delegate. 

Those  Christians  are  right  who  insist  that  the 
essential  article  of  their  faith  is  not  the  nature  of 
the  God  they  worship,  but  the  life  of  Jesus,  his  son 
and  exemplar.  The  God  who  is  the  sum  of  per¬ 
fections  was  Greek  and  Hindu  before  he  was  Chris¬ 
tian,  and  the  intolerable  burden  of  Christian  the¬ 
ology  has  ever  been  its  notion  of  an  omnipotent  and 
omniprescient  creator  who  could  frame  a  cosmos 
with  such  a  core  of  evil  that  he  must  sacrifice  for 
its  redemption.  Such  a  conception  is  inherently 
contrary  to  sense;  it  violates  the  meanings  of  lan¬ 
guage;  and  no  metaphysical  sublimations  can  give 
it  an  enduring  rationality.  But  the  strength  and  the 
essence  of  the  Christian  faith  have  never  resided 
here.  Rather  they  have  been,  and  must  be,  in  the 
life  of  the  Savior  of  men — in  him  who  was  wearied 
before  he  found  rest,  who  was  tempted  before  he 
was  transfigured,  who  suffered  pain  and  death  be¬ 
fore  he  overcame  them.  In  the  most  magnificent 
of  Christian  hymns  the  note  that  clutches  the  souls 
of  men  is  not  the  sublimity  of  the  “dies  irae,”  but 
the  tenderness  and  pain  and  compassion  of  the  won¬ 
derful  stanza — 

Quaerens  me  sedisti  lassus, 

Redemisti  crucem  passus : 

Tantus  labor  non  sit  cassus  I 

The  link  between  God  and  man  is  mutual  ideality, 
mutual  endeavor,  mutual  pain :  in  divine  suffering  is 
divine  beauty. 

What  is  at  once  most  human  and  most  divine  in 
men  is  their  power  of  idealizing  life.  Amid  the 
balks  and  hurts  and  rigors  of  experience  the  soul 


Essential 

Christianity 


The  Cross 


152 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Idealism 

dramatizes 


The  Ideal 
City 


instinctively  selects  certain  elements  to  be  glorified 
with  beauty,  and  this  glorified  life  becomes  the  pat¬ 
tern  of  desire.  Idealization  is  a  kind  of  dramatiza¬ 
tion,  and  like  all  drama  it  selects  the  pertinent  from 
the  haphazard  contexts  of  reality;  it  is  art,  and  so 
is  neglectful  of  non-artistic  truths.  But  because  it 
is  art  it  possesses  the  wistfulness  of  all  creative 
endeavor,  and  reflects  the  huger  endeavor  of  cosmic 
creation.  It  spiritualizes  life,  not  by  denying  the 
truth  of  ugliness  and  sin,  but  by  proclaiming  the 
unconquerable  effort  of  the  world  to  slough  these 
off. 

Over  and  over  again  Plato  darkly  affirms  the  high 
and  perfect  independence  of  other- world  beauty, 
and  yet  perhaps  his  noblest  passage  is  one  in  which, 
for  the  moment,  he  withdraws  the  divine  from  the 
quiet  of  celestial  splendor  down  into  the  turbid  and 
aching  imperfection  of  man’s  life;  and  so,  of  the 
Ideal  City  he  makes  Socrates  say: 

In  Heaven  there  is  laid  up  a  pattern  of  it,  methinks,  which 
he  who  desires  may  behold,  and  beholding,  may  set  his  own 
house  in  order.  But  whether  such  an  one  exists,  or  will  ever 
exist  in  fact,  is  no  matter ;  for  he  will  live  after  the  manner 
of  that  City,  having  nothing  to  do  with  any  other. 

Man’s  life  is  shot  through  with  imperfections,  yet 
in  the  vision  of  beauty  is  salvation. 

The  view  that  I  have  set  forth  is  Manichaean  and 
unorthodox,  for  it  represents  evil  as  real  and  God 
as  a  struggling  God,  hating  sin  because  sin  is  a 
cosmic  danger  and  hating  ugliness  because  the  crea¬ 
tion  of  beauty  is  not,  nor  ever  can  be,  complete. 
The  view  is  unorthodox,  but  it  may  be  that  God 
himself  is  not  orthodox. 


VI.  BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


Tot5  Otol^  KaTeaKevdcrOrj  ra  Trpay/xara  8l  epcora  KaAwp. 

— Plato. 


I 

AS  I  was  passing  from  the  gate  of  the  University 
.Campus  one  noonday  hour,  I  found  stationed 
there  a  young  man  who  was  distributing  printed 
papers  to  all  comers.  Mechanically  I  took  one  of 
the  papers,  glancing  through  it  as  I  walked. 

It  was  made  up  in  the  form  of  a  newspaper;  but 
this  was  its  title:  ‘‘The  Truth  About  God  and 
Life”;  and  below,  in  the  usual  form,  “Published 
Monthly  by  the  Church  of  Homanity,  Great  Bend, 
Kansas.”  A  religious  tract?  Yes, — but  a  religious 
tract  from  Kansas  is  worth  inspection.  Beneath 
the  title,  in  italics,  was  printed :  “Cheerful  Greeting 
to  all.  This  little  Messenger  is  distributed  by  the 
Church  of  Humanity  to  introduce  its  great  scientific 
discoveries  to  all  people,  that  God  and  Souls  are 
myths  and  death  the  final  cessation  of  conscious 
life,  and  to  teach  them  how  and  where  to  look  for 
the  proof.” 

The  proof  is  offered  in  the  leading  article,  titled : 
“In  the  Destruction  of  Thousands  of  Lives  by  the 
Great  Forest  Fires  of  the  Northwest  is  seen  Sure 
Proof  of  our  Great  Scientific  Discoveries  that  Gods 
and  Souls  do  not  Exist  and  that  Conscious  Life  Ends 
at  Death.”  The  argument  which  follows  is  based 
upon  the  news  dispatches  concerning  the  destructive 

153 


An  atheist 
tract 


Cataclysm 


154 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Proof 
that  there 
is  no  God 


fires  of  the  early  autumn.  A  few  sentences  will 
disclose  its  character: 

The  fires  have  swept  with  cyclonic  fury  through  many  thou¬ 
sands  of  square  miles  of  forest  destroying  dozens  of  villages 
and  hundreds  of  isolated  homes.  Hundreds  of  men,  women 
and  children  perished  in  the  flames  of  the  forest  they  were 
taught  to  believe  had  been  planted  and  grown  by  God  for 
their  special  use.  Many  of  them  had  loved,  praised  and 
worshiped  that  mental  idol  ever  since  they  were  heathenized  in 

childhood .  In  the  extinguishment  of  their  lives  is  seen 

the  sure  proof  that  there  is  no  God  to  care  for  them  or  the 
forest  they  inhabited.  No  being  could  have  raised  the  forest 
and  destroyed  it  in  that  way,  because  it  shows  clearly  the  en¬ 
tire  absence  of  thought  and  design  back  of  its.  growth  and 
destruction.  This  is  sure  proof  that  the  Universe  contains  no 
God  who  knows  of  the  existence  of  those  forests  nor  of  the 
people  who  inhabited  them. 

It  is  not  a  new  argument — this  ‘‘proof”  that  has 
been  stirring  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  man  in 
Kansas.  ^  It  is  crudely  put,  and  in  a  manner  which 
the  veriest  tyro  in  dialectic  could  show  to  be  fal¬ 
lacious.  And  yet  it  is  no  argument  to  be  despised. 
It  has  carried  and  it  still  carries  conviction  to  the 
minds  of  men;  nor  have  the  answers  of  philosophers 
and  theologians  for  twenty-five  hundred  years  yet 
made  clear — clear  in  the  presence  of  unmerited 
affliction,  of  uncombatable  disaster — how  a  God  can 
be,  at  once  all  powerful,  all  wise,  and  all  good,  when 
evils  such  as  these  are  possible.  In  every  stress  of 
human  circumstance  this  question  has  arisen,  and 
in  every  stress  to  come  it  will  arise  again  so  long 
as  men  need  and  questioningly  seek  salvation. 

II 

Yet  it  is  not  the  problem  so  much  as  the  cure 
that  interests  me  in  the  tract  from  Great  Bend. 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


155 


“Cheerful  Greeting  to  all !”  What  new  Evangel  has 
this  Kansas  prophet  to  offer?  ....  Alas!  it  is  no 
new  one :  the  man’s  discoveries  are  only  his  own, 
not  of  the  race.  Still  in  the  earnestness  with  which 
he  phrases  them,  the  occasion  which  inspires  them, 
there  is  matter  for  thought, — besides,  as  he  tells  us, 
there  are  three  hundred  members  in  his  Church,  men 
convinced  by  his  reasoning. 

I  have  been  asked  (he  writes)  to  point  out  the  practical 
value  of  our  discoveries  that  the  Universe  contains  no  god  and 
that  conscious  life  is  permanently  ended  at  death.  Each  in¬ 
dividual  is  benefitted  in  many  practical  ways  by  a  knowledge 
of  our  great  discoveries.  A  few  of  these  I  shall  enumerate: 

1.  It  eradicates  all  fear  of  gods,  devils,  ghosts,  sprites,  and 
spooks. 

2.  It  eradicates  all  fear  of  suffering  after  death. 

3.  It  protects  from  the  vice  of  practicing  idolatry  and  the 
ignorance  of  believing  religious  superstitions  and  the  moral 
crime  of  aiding  in  teaching,  supporting,  spreading  and  per¬ 
petuating  them,  to  the  utter  shame  and  disgrace  of  our  race 
and  the  age  in  which  we  live. 

4.  It  enables  one  to  give  his  encouragement,  support  and  aid 
to  the  enlightening  and  civilizing  forces  in  society. 

5.  It  takes  the  running  and  government  of  the  world  out  of 
the  hands  of  an  imaginary  god  and  places  it  in  the  hands  of  the 
people  to  run  and  govern  to  suit  themselves,  and  places  the 
responsibility  for  its  proper  management  on  them  instead  of 
on  gods  that  do  not  exist. 

6.  It  furnishes  the  only  true  basis  for  a  world-wide  move¬ 
ment  for  the  conservation  of  the  natural  resources  of  the  earth. 
It  shows  our  race  to  be  adrift  on  a  planet  in  space  without  any 
possible  show  for  outside  aid  when  it  exhausts  its  supplies 
aboard.  Hence  the  imperative  necessity  of  conserving  these 
supplies  as  the  race  must  inevitably  perish  when  they  are  ex¬ 
hausted. 

Here,  then,  is  the  essence  of  the  Evangel  from 
Kansas :  It  abolishes  superstitious  fear.  It  teaches 
man  to  trust  himself.  It  defines  the  possibilities  of 
mortal  achievement  and  the  worth  of  mortal  life. 


<  ; 


The 

Evangel 

from 

Kansas 


156 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Lucretius 


De  Rerum 
Natura,  III. 
894f 


To  whom  does  this  message  carry  us?  To  whom 
can  it  carry  save  to  the  loftiest  of  the  Roman  poets? 
For  was  it  not  the  message  of  Lucretius,  too,  in  the 
dark  years  of  the  corruption  and  decay  of  the 
Roman  Republic,  when  men’s  minds  were  in  the 
turmoil  of  uprooted  faiths  and  humanity  was 
blackening  with  blood, — was  it  not  the  message  of 
Lucretius  that  the  root  of  human  evil  is  super¬ 
stitious  fear,  that  wisdom  lies  in  self-control  and 
self-trust,  that  the  problem  of  life  is  the  problem 
of  conformity  with  physical  nature,  and  that  provi¬ 
dential  gods  and  immortal  souls  do  not  exist? 

With  an  earnestness  strange  to  us,  so  long  accus¬ 
tomed  to  another  type  of  preaching,  Lucretius  pleads 
with  men  to  do  away  with  their  vain  and  helpless 
aspirations  after  a  life  to  come,  as  with  their  idle 
fears  of  its  possible  horrors.  To  the  dead  he  says: 

Now,  now,  no  more  shall  thy  glad  home  welcome  thee — 
Nay,  nor  dear  wife  and  children  sweet  hasten  to  seize 
Quick  kisses,  touching  thy  heart  with  wordless  joy. 

No  more  canst  thou  follow  prosperous  ways,  nor  be. 

E’en  in  their  need,  a  strength  to  thy  beloved ! 

“Piteous,”  men  say,  “ah,  piteous  thou  from  whom 
This  one  dread  day  hath  ta’en  the  fruits  of  life!” 

— Yet  say  they  not,  oh,  wherefore  say  they  not, 

“Nor  unto  thee  abideth  wone  of  these”? 

Strange  sermon,  is  it  not,  and  uttered  with  a 
strange  and  earnest  eloquence,  which  echoes  down 
the  centuries  a  deathless  beauty,  and  chokes  the 
voice  like  memories  of  tears. 

Ill 

Lucretius  possessed  a  soul  keenly  sensitive  to  the 
hurt  of  life.  There  was  with  him  no  glozing  over 
of  the  brute  fact  of  pain  or  of  the  ugly  reality  of 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


157 


'  evil.  He  hated  these,  and  he  hated  them  the  more 
because  of  his  clear  understanding  that  human 
cruelty  is  not  the  least  of  their  causes. 

O  wretched  minds  of  men !  O  blinded  hearts ! 

In  what  mad  glooms,  in  perils  of  what  might, 

Ye  speed  your  little  years!  Nor  pause  to  see 
How  Nature  pleadeth  naught  but  that  ye  keep 
Bodies  pain-sundered,  minds  redeemed  from  fear  1 

In  another  passage,  where  he  is  inveighing  against 
the  horrors  to  which  Superstition  may  give  rise, — 

tantum  religio  potuit  suadere  malorum  1 — 

and  where  he  is  praising  that  “man  of  Greece  who 
first  raised  mortal  eyes  to  meet,  and  first  stood  forth 
against  the  horrid  mien”  of  this  most  flagellant  of 
delusions,  Lucretius  cites  as  an  instance  of  scelerosa 
atque  impia  facta  done  in  the  name  of  religion,  the 
sacrifice  of  Iphigenia  in  Aulis.  He  describes  with 
pitying  indignation  the  deceit  practiced  upon  the 
maiden,  brought  to  undergo  a  miserable  death 
instead  of  to  celebrate  a  happy  marriage;  he  tells 
of  the  hidden  knives  of  the  attendants,  the  sudden 
terror  of  the  maid,  the  grief  of  the  father — who  yet 
can  deliver  the  slaughterer’s  stroke !  And  what  is  it 
all  for?  That  a  fleet  may  have  a  fortunate  wind, 
upon  a  mission  of  war ! 

Ah,  the  evils  that  men  do,  the  cruel  needless  evils, 
bayed  on  by  the  madnesses  of  superstition !  Is  it  not 
insane  obsession, — nay,  to  be  veritably  possessed  of 
devils, — to  believe,  as  man  has  hauntingly  believed 
since  the  first  glimmerings  of  thought  were  his,  that 
human  felicity,  human  success  and  progress,  can  be 
obtained  only  at  the  price  of  human  agonies  ? 

We  have  all  shuddered  at  the  horrible  fruits  of 


y 


Book  II. 
i4f 


Epicurus 


Sacrifice  of 
Iphigenia 


158 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Supersti¬ 
tion  and 
cruelty 


this  notion  in  savage  life.  Who  has  not  heard  of  the 
terrible  sacrifices  of  the  Konds  of  India?  They 
believed,  we  are  told,  that  without  a  morsel  of  a 
virgin’s  flesh,  fresh-torn  from  her  living  body,  no 
field  could  wax  fruitful.  The  idea  underlying  the 
sacrifice  is  magic — “sympathetic”  magic,  as  it  is 
fearfully  named.  There  is  in  it  no  designed  cruelty, 
no  infliction  of  suffering  for  the  sake  of  the  specta¬ 
cle  (that  is  reserved  for  more  sophisticated  peoples) ; 
there  is  only  the  naked  hideousness  of  practices  per¬ 
suaded  by  the  cold  logic  of  an  unfounded  belief. 

A  grim  memorial  of  these  forgotten  horrors  (so  we  read  in 
the  General  Report  of  the  Census  of  India)  is  to  be  seen  in  the 
Madras  Museum  in  the  form  of  a  rude  representation  in  wood 
of  the  head  and  trunk  of  an  elephant  pivoted  on  a  stout  post. 
To  this  the  victim  was  bound  head  downwards  and  the  ma¬ 
chine  was  slowly  turned  round  in  the  center  of  a  crowd  of 
worshipers  who  hacked  and  tore  away  scraps  of  flesh  to  bury 
in  their  fields,  chanting  the  while  a  ghastly  hymn,  an  extract 
from  which  illustrates  very  clearly  the  theory  of  sympathetic 
magic  underlying  the  ritual : 


Kond 
sacrifice 
of  a  virgin 


As  the  tears  stream  from  thine  eyes. 

So  may  the  rain  pour  down  in  Asar; 

As  the  mucus  trickles  from  thy  nostrils, 
So  may  it  drizzle  at  intervals ; 

As  thy  blood  gushes  forth, 

So  may  the  vegetation  sprout; 

As  thy  gore  falls  in  drops. 

So  may  the  grains  of  rice  form. 


Do  we  say  that  these  Konds  are  degenerate 
savages  ?  that  this  is  an  isolated  instance  ?  That  were 
an  ill  reading  of  the  race’s  record.  Almost  the 
identical  practice  is  described  by  Father  De  Smet 
among  the  Pawnees  of  the  American  prairies;  and 
there  are  not  wanting  scholars  who  intimate  that  the 
tale  of  the  sacrifice  of  Iphigenia  is  but  the  mythic 
memory  of  a  custom  once  as  common  in  Europe  as 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


159 


ever  it  has  been  in  Asia  or  America, — the  vicarious 
offering  up  of  innocent  blood  to  be  transubstan¬ 
tiated  into  the  bread  of  life. 

It  was  not  far  from  Lucretius’  own  time,  in  the 
flush  of  the  imperial  civilization,  that  a  man  of  a 
very  different  temper  was  recording  with  hot  and 
aching  pen  the  martyrdom  of  Felicitas  and  Perpetua. 
“Vivia  Perpetua,”  says  the  narrator,  “was  well  born 
and  well  educated ;  she  was  married  and  had  a  son 
at  the  breast;  she  was  about  two  and  twenty  years 
of  age.”  Felicitas,  her  sister  in  martyrdom,  was  of 
humbler  station;  three  days  before  the  two  were  led 
into  the  arena,  Felicitas  gave  birth  to  a  daughter,  in 
prison.  One  of  the  gaolers,  mocking  the  birth- 
pangs,  asked  how  she  would  bear  being  thrown  to 
the  beasts ;  she  answered  him :  “Now  I  suffer  alone ; 
then  another  will  suffer  in  and  for  me,  because  I 
also  suffer  for  Him.” 

Moreover  (proceeds  the  chronicle  for  the  young  women 
the  devil  had  prepared  a  very  fierce  cow,  provided  especially 
for  that  purpose,  contrary  to  custom,  rivalling  their  sex  also 
in  that  of  the  beast.  And  so,  stripped  and  clothed  with  nets, 
they  were  led  forth.  The  populace  shuddered  as  they  saw  one 
young  woman  of  delicate  frame,  and  another  with  breasts  still 
dropping  from  her  recent  childbirth.  So,  being  recalled,  they 
are  clad  in  loose  robes.  Perpetua  is  first  led  in.  She  was 
tossed,  and  fell  on  her  loins ;  and  when  she  saw  her  tunic  torn 
from  her  side,  she  drew  it  over  her  as  a  veil  for  her  middle, 
rather  mindful  of  her  modesty  than  her  suffering.  Then  she 
was  called  for  again,  and  bound  up  her  dishevelled  hair ;  for 
it  was  not  becoming  for  a  martyr  to  suffer  with  dishevelled 
hair,  lest  she  should  appear  to  be  mourning  in  her  glory.  So 
she  rose  up ;  and  when  she  saw  Felicitas  crushed,  she  ap¬ 
proached  and  gave  her  her  hand,  and  lifted  her  up.  And  both 
of  them  stood  together;  and  the  brutality  of  the  populace 
being  appeased,  they  were  recalled  to  the  Sanavivarian  gate. 


Tertullian 


Martyrdom 
of  Perpetua 
and  Felicitas 


1  Passio  Perpetua  (R.  e;.  Wallis). 


160 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Salvum 

lotum! 


Credo 

quia 

absurdum 


After  this  other  Christians  were  led  forth;  and  one 
of  them,  Saturus,  from  one  bite  of  the  leopard  was 
bathed  with  such  a  quantity  of  blood,  that  the  popu¬ 
lace  shouted  out,  in  mockery  of  Christian  baptism, 
“Saved  and  Washed!  Saved  and  Washed!”  There 
was  but  one  more  scene : 

And  when  the  populace  called  for  them  into  the  midst,  that 
as  the  sword  penetrated  into  their  body  they  might  make  their 
eyes  partners  in  the  murder,  they  rose  up  of  their  own  accord, 
and  transferred  themselves  whither  the  people  wished;  but 
they  first  kissed  one  another  that  they  might  consummate  their 
martyrdom  with  the  kiss  of  peace,  .  . 

O  most  brave  and  blessed  martyrs !  O  truly  called  and 
chosen  unto  the  glory  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ!  Whom  who¬ 
ever  magnifies,  and  honors,  and  adores,  assuredly  ought  to 
read  these  examples  for  the  edification  of  the  Church,  not  less 
than  the  olden  ones,  so  that  new  virtues  also  may  testify  that 
one  and  the  same  Holy  Spirit  is  always  operating,  even  until 
now,  and  God  the  Father  Omnipotent,  and  His  Son  Jesus 
Christ  our  Lord,  whose  is  the  glory  and  infinite  power  for  ever 
and  ever.  Amen. 

I  have  appended  to  Tertullian’s  account  of  a  mar¬ 
tyrdom  which  doubtless  he  witnessed,  his  burst  of 
faith  in  God  as  the  Father  Omnipotent.  Credo  quia 
absurdum — “I  believe  because  it  is  unbelievable!” 
— is  the  famous  utterance  of  his  faith  in  the  miracle 
of  Christianity.  And  here  we  see  this  impossible 
faith,  testified  in  enthusiastic  devotion  tO'  an  all- 
powerful  Father  who  yet  permits  such  torments  to 
his  children. 

Many  hundred  years  later,  there  is  another  ut¬ 
terance,  from  another  Churchman,  on  another  con¬ 
tinent,  that  seems  to  me  truer  to  the  foundations  of 
human  reason,  if  not  to  the  magnificence  of  the  hu¬ 
man  will.  Fray  Bernardino  de  Sahagun  has  given 
us  page  after  page  of  calmly  narrated  horrors,  per- 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


161 


haps  the  most  frightful  in  human  annals — the  Aztec 
human  sacrifices.  Finally  he  comes  to  the  chapter 
detailing  the  circumstances  of  the  offering  of  chil¬ 
dren  to  the  gods  of  the  waters.  “They  slay/’  he 
says,  “each  year  a  great  number  of  children  in  the 
places  of  which  I  have  spoken,  and  after  they  have 
done  them  to  death,  they  cook  and  eat  them.”  And 
there  he  breaks  down : 

I  think  that  there  can  be  no  heart  so  hard  as  not  to  recoil 
in  horror  and  terror  and  not  to  shed  tears  on  hearing  of  a 
cruelty  so  inhuman, — nay,  more  than  ferocious,  of  inspiration 
veritably  devilish.  It  is  certainly  a  thing  grievous  and  horrible 
to  see  that  our  human  nature  can  sound  such  degradation  that 
fathers,  obedient  to  the  inspirations  of  the  demon,  can  kill  and 
eat  their  own  children,  without  thinking  that  they  render  them¬ 
selves  culpable  through  any  offense,  but  on  the  contrary  be¬ 
lieving  that  they  make  themselves  pleasing  to  their  gods.  The 
cause  of  this  cruel  blindness,  of  which  these  poor  children  are 
victims,  ought  not  exactly  to  be  imputed  to  the  natural  inspira¬ 
tion  of  their  fathers,  who  indeed  shed  abundant  tears  and 
give  themselves  to  this  practice  with  dolor  of  soul.  Rather  one 
should  see  therein  the  hateful  and  barbarous  hand  of  Satan, 
our  sempiternal  enemy,  who  employs  all  his  malignant  wiles  to 
urge  on  to  this  infernal  deed.  O  Lord  God  1  revenge  us  on  this 
cruel  enemy !  ^ 


IV 

There  are  deeds  of  men  for  which  there  is  but  one 
description:  Works  of  the  Devil.  Actions  such  as  I 
have  been  recounting  belong  to  this  category.  For 
whether  we  see  in  these  actions  the  mere  misfortune 


2  In  an  identical  vein  Father  De  Smet,  nearly  four  centuries  later, 
exclaims  against  the  cruel  and  famous  Pawnee  sacrifice  of  a  virgin  for 
tlie  fertilization  of  their  fields:  “In  view  of  so  much  cruelty,  who  could 
mistake  the  agency  of  the  arch  enemy  of  mankind,  and  who  would 
refuse  to  exert  himself  to  bring  these  benighted  nations  to  the  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  One  only  true  Mediator  between  God  and  Man,  and  of 
the  only  true  sacrifice  without  which  it  is  impossible  to  appease  the 
Divine  justice?”  {Life,  Letters  and ^  Travels,  p.  988.)  After  reading 
the  missionary’s  description  of  the  rite  it  is  indeed  difficult  not  to  be¬ 
lieve  in  the  very  real  presence  of  a  very  real  and  near  devil. 


Children 
sacrificed 
to  Tlaloc 


Historia, 
II.  XX. 


Works  of 
the  Devil 


162 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


To  the 
Fortune 
of  the 
Enterprise 


Piaculum 


of  superstition,  as  with  the  Kond;  or  the  utter  deg¬ 
radation  of  human  sensibility,  as  with  the  Aztec  and 
the  Roman;  we  can  find  in  Nature  no  apology  for 
the  horrible  fact. 

To  be  sure,  we  see  these  alien  instances  in  an  ex¬ 
aggerated  perspective.  Yet  human  sacrifice  is  not 
so  far  removed  from  our  civilization  as  we  custo¬ 
marily  assume — human  sacrifice  and  mutilation. 
Even  the  illuminated  Greeks,  we  more  than  suspect, 
in  all  but  the  best  moments  of  their  intelligence, 
found  it  necessary  to  insure  the  success  of  their 
enterprises  by  offerings  of  human  life.  The  sacri¬ 
fice  of  Iphigenia  belongs  to  mythic  pre-history;  but 
not  so  the  offering  of  the  Persian  captives  before  the 
battle  of  Salamis.  Indeed,  we  are  reasonably  con¬ 
vinced  that  in  the  ancient  world  most  great  engineer¬ 
ing  enterprises — fortresses,  temples,  bridges,  via¬ 
ducts — had  their  corners  set  on  the  bodies  of  human 
beings  whose  lives  were  propitiations  to  the  Fortune 
of  the  structure  ;  and  we  are  darkly  aware  that  more 
than  once  human  skeletons  have  been  found  im¬ 
mured  in  the  crumbling  walls  of  Christian  edifices. 
Superstition  dies  a  slow  and  ghastly  death. 

It  is  a  strange  hypothesis,  no  doubt,  clamping 
men’s  minds  with  the  grim  conviction  that  the  bless¬ 
ings  of  life  are  to  be  won  from  a  jealous  and  mon¬ 
strous  Nature  only  at  a  price  of  human  life.  It  is  a 
strange  hypothesis,  yet  in  it  is  to  be  -  found  the 
explanation  of  the  thousand  mad  propitiations  and 
flagellations  and  ascetic  condemnations  of  the  flesh 
which  fill  up  the  blacker  chapters  of  our  records. 
And  who  shall  say  that  there  is  not  some  foundation 
in  Nature  herself  for  an  idea  of  such  dread  and  per¬ 
sistent  consequence? 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


163 


At  all  events,  conceding  the  hypothesis,  the  prac¬ 
tices  are  not  unintelligible.  We  of  today  think  little 
of  the  lives  we  yearly  sacrifice  to  our  industrial  gods 
— the  lives  and  the  mutilations.  Life  Insurance  Sky¬ 
scrapers,  North  River  Tunnels,  Panama  Canals, — 
we  know  well  that  the  cost  of  such  enterprises  must 
be  paid  in  men’s  lives,  by  the  score.  And  Railroad¬ 
ing,  Ironworking,  Coal  Mining,  the  Sweatshop  Sys¬ 
tem, — are  we  not  suavely  indifferent  to  the  mutila¬ 
tions  as  well  as  the  deaths  which  mark  the  course  of 
that  triumphant  Industrialism  upon  which  we  so 
magnificate  ourselves  ?  What  is  the  price  of  a  man’s 
hand,  a  man’s  strong  right  arm,  a  man’s  eyes,  in 
Pittsburgh?  We  shudder  at  the  Aztec  cannibalistic 
sacraments,  but  does  not  Mammon,  too,  exact  his 
sacraments — banquets  which  we  must  share — 
whereof  the  meat  is  flesh  of  little  children?  To  the 
Fortune  of  the  Enterprise  we,  like  the  Pagan,  ren¬ 
der  our  holocausts  and  our  blood-offerings ;  we  chain 
men  to  our  machines  and  found  cities  on  their  bones, 
and  if  any  there  be  to  demand  of  us,  ‘By  what 
Right?’  we  point  in  complacent  answer  where  our 
Pontius  Pilates  are  washing  their  white  hands  in  the 
high  Capitols. 

The  naked  and  terrible  fact  is  that  what  we  call 
Human  Progress,  Human  Civilization,  is  got  and 
always  has  been  got  at  a  cost  which  can  only  be 
computed  in  Human  Pain.  In  a  speech  which 
Thucydides  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Pericles,  in  a 
dark  moment  of  the  war  with  Sparta,  the  hero  of 
Athenian  culture  says  to  his  fellow  citizens : 


Blood- 
offerings  to 
Industrial 
gods 


Pain  and 
Progress 


You  are  bound  to  maintain  the  imperial  dignity  of  your  city 
in  which  you  all  take  pride ;  for  you  should  not  covet  the  glory 
unless  you  will  endure  the  toil .  Know  that  your  city 


164 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  glory 
that  was 
Greece 


has  the  greatest  name  in  all  the  world  because  she  has  never 
yielded  to  misfortunes,  but  has  sacrificed  more  lives  and  en¬ 
dured  severer  hardships  in  war  than  any  other :  wherefore  also 
she  has  the  greatest  power  of  any  state  up  to  this  day;  and 
the  memory  of  her  glory  will  always  survive.  Even  if  we 
should  be  compelled  at  last  to  abate  somewhat  of  our  greatness 
(for  all  things  have  their  times  of  growth  and  decay),  yet  will 
the  recollection  live,  that,  of  all  Hellenes,  we  ruled  over  the 
greatest  number  of  Elellenic  subjects;  that  we  withstood  our 
enemies,  whether  single  or  united,  in  the  most  terrible  wars, 
and  that  we  were  the  inhabitants  of  a  city  endowed  with  every 
sort  of  wealth  and  greatness.^ 


The  tremendous  price  that  was  paid  for  'hhe  glory 
that  was  Greece” — and  so  for  our  civilization  in  the 
large  respect  in  which  it  is  still  Greek — appears  with 
unexampled  eloquence  in  yet  another  passage  in 
which  Thucydides  speaks  of  a  later  period  of  the 
long  wars : 


Thucydides 
on  revolu¬ 
tion 


When  troubles  had  once  begun  in  the  cities  those  who  fol¬ 
lowed  carried  the  revolutionary  spirit  further  and  further,  and 
determined  to  outdo  the  report  of  all  who  had  preceded  them 
by  the  ingenuity  of  their  enterprises  and  the  atrocity  of  their 
revenges. 

The  meaning  of  words  had  no  longer  the  same  relation  to 
things,  but  was  changed  by  them  as  they  thought  proper.  Reck¬ 
less  daring  was  held  to  be  loyal  courage;  prudent  delay  was 
the  excuse  of  a  coward;  moderation  was  the  disguise  of  un¬ 
manly  weakness ;  to  know  everything  v^^as  to  do  nothing. 

Frantic  energy  was  the  true  quality  of  a  man.  A  conspirator 
who  wanted  to  be  safe  was  a  recreant  in  disguise.  The  lover 
of  violence  was  always  trusted,  and  his  opponent  suspected. 
He  who  succeeded  in  a  plot  was  deemed  knowing,  but  a  still 
greater  master  in  craft  was  he  who  detected  one.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  who  plotted  from  the  first  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
plots  was  a  breaker  up  of  parties  and  a  poltroon  who  was 
afraid  of  the  enemy. 

In  a  word,  he  who  could  outstrip  another  in  a  bad  action 
was  applauded,  and  so  was  he  who  encouraged  to  evil  one  who 
had  no  idea  of  it. 


3  Jowett,  Thucydides. 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


16S 


Thucydides  goes  on  to  show  in  detail  how  the  whole 
morale  of  society  was  rotting  at  the  roots  while  the 
springs  of  man’s  humanity  were  become  dried  and 
dead.  It  is  a  terrible  arraignment,  yet  not  more  ter¬ 
rible  than  that  in  which  Tacitus  arraigns  the  Im¬ 
perial  Civilization  of  Rome: 

....  Things  sacred  defiled,  outrageous  adulteries;  the  sea 
crowded  with  exiles,  the  isles  polluted  with  blood.  In  the  City 
yet  blacker  savagery :  nobility,  wealth,  the  avoidance,  the  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  office, — all  was  crime,  and  virtue  the  most  certain 
dov/nfall.  Not  less  detestable  than  their  deeds  were  the  re¬ 
wards  of  the  informers,  of  whom  some  secured  a  priesthood 
or  a  consulate  for  their  spoil,  while  others  became  procurators 
or  imperial  advisers, — till  hatred  and  fear  were  everywhere. 
The  very  slaves  were  turned  against  their  masters,  freedmen 
against  their  patrons,  and  whoso  lacked  a  foe  was  ruined  by  his 
friends ! 

We  may  pass  the  Ages  customarily  called  ‘‘Dark,” 
though  our  Civilization  is  not  without  its  debt  to 
them.  But  the  Italian  Renaissance :  “the  emancipa¬ 
tion  of  reason  for  the  modern  world,”  Symonds 
calls  it.  The  emancipation  of  reason, — yet,  if  so, 
again  at  a  price.  Perhaps  Dante’s  Inferno  and 
Machiavelli’s  Prince  state  the  price  as  well  as  it  can 
be  stated.  We  can  pick  it  up,  coin  by  coin,  through¬ 
out  the  course  of  Renaissance  history.  Giovanni 
Bentivoglio  pounded  to  death  in  a  wine-vat  by  the 
populace.  .  .  .  The  Canetoli  inviting  the  Benti- 
vogli  to  a  christening  feast,  and  there  murdering 
them.  .  .  .  The  Canetoli,  in  turn,  hunted  down 

and  their  smoking  hearts  nailed  to  the  Bentivoglio 
palace.  .  .  .  These  are  incidents  in  the  history  of 
one  Italian  house  in  the  one  small  city  of  Bologna. 
When  we  add  the  deeds  of  the  Visconti,  the  Sforzes- 
chi,  the  Malatesti,  and  a  hundred  and  one  other 
princely  houses,  above  all  the  most  famously  infa- 


The 

grandeur 
that  was 
Rome 


HistoricB 

I,  ii 


Renaissance 

Italy 


12 


166 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Italian 

despots 


Cost  of 
civilization 


mous  Borgias,  then  we  begin  to  appreciate  the  politi¬ 
cal  cost  of  the  culture  of  Italy. 

And  this  political  cost  is  only  the  outward  and 
upper  reflection  of  what  lay  beneath  the  surface. 
Symonds  says : 

Isolated,  crime-haunted,  and  remorseless,  at  the  same  time 
fierce  and  timorous,  the  despot  not  infrequently  made  of  vice  a 

fine  art  for  his  amusement,  and  openly  defied  humanity . 

Inordinate  lust  and  refined  cruelty  sated  his  irritable  and  jaded 
appetites.  He  destroyed  pity  in  his  soul,  and  fed  his  dogs  with 
living  men.  .  .  . 

Loyalty  was  a  virtue  but  little  esteemed  in  Italy;  engage¬ 
ments  seemed  made  to  be  broken ;  even  the  crime  of  violence 
was  aggravated  by  the  game  of  perfidy,  a  bravo’s  stiletto  or 
slow  poison  being  reckoned  among  the  legitimate  means  for 
ridding  men  of  rivals  or  for  revenging  a  slight. 

Looking  back  over  the  course  of  human  history 
we  see  half  the  action  given  over  to  needless  or 
wanton  infliction  of  suffering.  “History  is  a  bath  of 
blood,”  says  William  James;  and  Pericles,  in  the 
speech  I  have  cited,  gives  a  kind  of  philosophy  of 
history’s  diabolism:  “To  be  hateful  and  offensive 
has  ever  been  at  the  time  the  fate  of  those  who  have 
aspired  to  empire.”  Human  power  and  human 
progress  are  not  humane. 

We  are^  nowadays  inclined  to  view  all  this  with  a 
retrospective  sigh — bad,  no  doubt,  in  its  day,  but  we 
have  outgrown  the  evil.  But  is  it  true  that  we  have 
outgrown  it?  Is  it  true  that  the  cost  of  Civilization 
is  not  yet  to  pay?  When  we  consider  the  toilsome 
hours,  the  dark  confinements,  the  loathsome  diseases, 
the  stunted  and  warped  physical  and  mental  growth 
which  Society  inflicts  on  the  tithe  of  its  members 
even  in  times  of  peace,  we  cannot,  it  seems  to  me, 
say  that  the  price  of  progress  has  as  yet  been  greatly 
abated.  And  even  if  we  hold  that  there  be  some 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


167 


abatement  in  the  Earth’s  brighter  regions,  this  does 
not  alter  the  fact  of  our  terrible  past:  the  fact  that 
Humanity  is  what  it  is  because  it  has  done  what  it 
has  done — because  of  its  sinners  as  well  as  its  saints, 
its  ecstasies  of  cruelty  as  well  as  its  ecstasies  of  de¬ 
votion.  Nor  can  we  ever  escape  from  the  sufferings 
which  we  have  inflicted;  they  bear  with  them  their 
own  perpetuity:  in  the  laws  of  social  organization, 
mal-adjusted ;  in  the  laws  of  individual  heredity,  re¬ 
peatedly  awakening  inner  and  forgotten  ills;  above 
all,  in  the  fact  of  an  organism  generation  by  genera¬ 
tion  more  subtly  sensitive  to  torment.  The  intensi¬ 
fying  pangs  of  childbirth  promise  eventually  to  de¬ 
stroy  the  human  race — if  first  man  perish  not  of  the 
madness  of  his  Civilization. 

V 

An  historical  survey  of  the  Human  Achievement 
must,  it  seems  to  me,  in  our  honester  moods  end  in  a 
shudder  and  a  darkening  of  the  eyes.  Full  of  sense¬ 
lessness,  full  of  wantonness,  full  of  loud  and  rapa¬ 
cious  cruelty,  are  the  records  of  Man’s  Deed. 

Tomorrow,  and  tomorrow,  and  tomorrow. 

Creeps  in  this  petty  pace  from  day  to  day, 

To  the  last  syllable  of  recorded  time; 

And  all  our  yesterdays  have  lighted  fools 
The  way  to  dusty  death. 

Life,  our  vaunted  human  life,  in  the  large  seems  but 

a  tale 

Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 

Signifying  nothing. 

And  with  Macbeth  we  ’gin  to  be  aweary  of  the 


The  future 


Man’s  Deed 


sun. 


168 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Human 

diabolism 


Burton 
on  the 
original 
sin 


Cleanthes 


It  is  not  strange  that  individuals  and  peoples  who 
have  seen  and  felt  such  suffering  as  man  can  inflict 
upon  man  should  have  arrived  at  the  conclusion, 
from  time  to  time,  that  man  it  is  who  is  the  root  and 
spring  of  all  the  wickedness  in  Creation.  This  is  the 
point  of  the  Hebrew  tale  of  the  fruit  of  the  Forbid¬ 
den  Tree,  which  opened  man’s  eyes  to  good  and  evil 
and  made  him  capable  of  the  devilish.  Corruption 
there  entered  in,  blighting  humanity  once  for  all. 
And  the  long  tale  of  human  affliction  has  since  been 
the  tale  of  the  Divine  castigation  which  alone  can 
purify  the  world  of  its  taint. 

“The  impulsive  cause,”  says  Burton,  in  the  gra¬ 
cious  exordium  of  his  monstrous  Anatomy, — “the 
impulsive  cause  of  these  miseries  in  Man,  this  priva¬ 
tion  of  destruction  of  God’s  image,  the  cause  of 
death  and  diseases,  of  all  temporal  and  eternal  pun¬ 
ishments,  was  the  sin  of  our  first  parent,  Adam,  in 
eating  of  the  forbidden  fruit,  by  the  devil’s  instiga¬ 
tion  and  allurement.  His  disobedience,  pride,  ambi¬ 
tion,  intemperance,  incredulity,  curiosity;  from 
whence  proceeded  original  sin,  and  that  general  cor¬ 
ruption  of  mankind,  as  from  a  fountain  flowed  all 
bad  inclinations  and  actual  transgressions  which 
cause  our  several  calamities  inflicted  upon  us  for  our 
sins.” 

This  is  the  view  which  we,  as  Christians,  have 
inherited  from  the  Old  Dispensation;  and  the  doc¬ 
tors  of  the  church  have  expended  vast  ingenuity  in 
their  efforts  to  render  it  in  terms  mentally  comforta¬ 
ble.  It  is  not,  however,  exclusively  a  Christian  view. 
One  of  the  first  of  the  Stoics,  Cleanthes,  ascribes  to 
Zeus  the  authorship  of  all  that  is,  on  land,  in  sea,  or 
in  the  heavens  above,  “save  only  the  deeds  of  the 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


169 


wicked  in  their  folly/’ — save  only  the  deeds  of  men. 

Christian  and  Stoic  alike  find  a  preponderance  of 
sin  and  suffering  in  human  history,  and  Christian 
and  Stoic  alike  turn  from  the  contemplation  of  hu¬ 
manity  to  the  larger  contemplation  of  an  all-inclu¬ 
sive  Creation  whose  general  plan  is  unharmed  by  the 
bitings  and  bickerings  of  petty  mortal  lives.  Un¬ 
doubtedly  in  many  of  our  moods  there  is  a  healing 
potency  in  this  return  to  Nature,  even  if  it  involve 
ascetic  denials  :  for  the  Christian,  of  the  physical  and 
intellectual  appetites;  for  the  Stoic,  of  the  emotional 
propensions.  We,  too,  have  our  moments  when  we 
look  longingly  to  the  quiet  and  dignity  of  that  part 
of  our  world  which  is  unaffected  by  the  obtrusions 
of  what  we  call  intelligent  mind.  The  noisy  inco¬ 
herencies  and  egotisms  of  days  beset  by  a  jangling 
industrialism — factory  whistles,  tram-cars,  electric 
placards.  Coney  Islands ;  the  clicking  and  sputtering 
and  thumping  of  machines;  the  bustling  of  human 
bodies;  the  blatancy  of  newspapers;  the  gush  of  sen¬ 
timental  paranoiacs  and  the  eye-rolling  frenzies  of 
those  protagonists  of  ‘soul’  whose  heroics  is  all  de¬ 
signed  to  ‘tear  a  passion  to  tatters,’ — from  all  this 
we,  too,  in  our  moments  of  weariness,  turn  for  relief 
to  the  freshness  and  breadth  of  unsullied  Nature. 
And  there,  in  the  ineffable  solitudes  of  the  sun- 
glorious  desert,  with  its  mile  on  mile  of  Cyclopean 
walls,  yellows  and  crimsons  and  purples  and  whites 
rising  in  fantastic  pinnacles  to  the  azure  sky,  we  find 
the  works  of  puny  men  dwarfed  and  forgotten;  or 
again,  beneath  the  still  and  distant  beauty  of  the 
stars,  we  know  anew  that  depth  and  tenderness  of 
night  which  the  glittering  town  has  banished  afar 
forever.  And  so  we  are  healed  of  the  corrupting 


Christian 
and  Stoic 


Nature’s 

katharsis 


170 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


taint  and  purged  of  humanity’s  inhumanity  by  the 
great  katharsis  of  Nature. 

VI 


The  return 
to  Nature 


Nature’s 

cruelties 


In  certain  of  our  moods  the  return  to  Nature  is 
unequivocally  a  healing.  The  fretful  and  stuffy  per¬ 
turbations  of  mortal  affairs  yield  to  its  expansive 
suavity.  It  shames  us  of  our  tight  shoes  and  starched 
collars  and  we  discover  a  benign  exhilaration  in 
naked  contact  even  with  its  harsher  realities.  And 
yet, — 

What  is  the  simple  truth?  Is  our  reason  satisfied 
because  our  temper  is  changed?  Nay,  is  our  life  sat¬ 
isfied  ?  Are  we — can  we  be  content  to  surrender  our 
normal  activities  and  intelligence  in  this  lackadaisi¬ 
cal  fashion?  A  man  is  neither  a  hermit  crab  nor  an 
eagle  to  bask  apart  or  soar  aloof ;  human  nature  is 
primarily  human,  and  business  is  business. 

When  we  stand  square-toed  and  face  Nature,  alert 
and  fair,  we  must  acknowledge,  I  think,  that  there  is 
a  deal  of  sham  in  our  notion  of  her  intrinsic  benefi¬ 
cence.  The  Human  Deed,  as  history  shows  it,  looks 
black  enough;  but  surely  not  it  alone  is  the  full  ac¬ 
count  of  the  foulness  we  find  in  life.  We  have  been 
too  concerned  to  find  excuse  for  the  Creator,  too 
ready  to  accept  all  the  blame  ourselves,  for  a  state 
of  affairs  that  is  not  pretty.  Man  has  been  devilish 
enough,  God  knows,  but  the  Serpent  was  before  him 
in  Paradise. 

There  are  times  when  Nature  delights  in  the  con¬ 
trivance  of  the  most  exquisite  engines  of  torture. 
Such,  for  example,  are  those  terrible  Franken- 
stein’s-man  parodies  of  the  human  body  in  which 
mortal  souls  are  encased  for  life.  There  once  dwelt 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


171 


in  my  neighborhood  two  human  beings  whose  coun¬ 
tenances  were  unendurable,  both  young  men.  One  I 
never  saw  on  the  street  save  in  early  morning  or  at 
twilight;  during  the  day  he  remained  secluded.  I 
judged  that  it  had  been  some  frightful  accident  that 
had  given  him  a  countenance  distorted  beyond  hu¬ 
man  kinship.  The  other  was  often  on  the  street, 
and  he  bore  a  mask  unillumined  by  the  light  of  rea¬ 
son,  and  I  have  seen  him  smile  monstrously.  Neither 
of  these  men  could  be  viewed  without  recoil  and 
neither  of  these  men  could  live  without  rebellious 
agony. 

What  are  we  to  say  of  the  human  monstrosities, 
idiots,  degenerates,  weaklings?  What  of  inherited 
diseases,  inherited  perversions  of  our  proper  nature  ? 
What  of  premature  senilities?  Of  madnesses,  de¬ 
cays,  rottings  of  minds  and  bodies  in  yet  living  be¬ 
ings?  The  Hydra-poison  of  distorted  sensibilities? 
Nay,  disease  itself,  cancer,  smallpox,  leprosy, 
plague?  Has  Nature  no  account  in  all  this?  Benefi¬ 
cent  Nature!  Healing  Nature! 

Is  it,  after  all,  man’s  fault — he  who  is  so  terribly 
tortured  from  without, — is  it  all  his  fault  that  there 
is  diabolism  in  the  world?  Nay  rather,  are  not  his 
blackest  practices  half  excused  by  his  too  natural 
conviction  that  the  Devil  at  the  heart  of  things  must 
somehow  be  placated  by  the  affliction  of  humankind? 
that  the  evil  core  of  the  world  must  be  propitiated  by 
man-offering  and  child-offering?  that  humanity’s 
ease  is  tolerable  to  God  only  so  long  as  he  gluts 
his  gaze  upon  the  Vicarious  Sufferer? 

In  the  spring  of  1906  the  following  dispatch  ap¬ 
peared  in  the  news  columns  of  the  New  York 
Times: 


Human 

monsters 


Disease 

and 

madness 


Propitiation 


172 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  grim 
choice 


Sodom  and 
Gomorrah 


St.  Petersburg,  March  30. — Horrible  accounts  are  reaching 
St.  Petersburg  of  cannibalism  and  starvation  among  tribes 
inhabiting  the  frozen  arctic  plain  of  the  Chukchi  Peninsula,  at 
the  extremity  of  Asia. 

Most  of  the  reindeer  died  from  starvation  in  the  winter  of 
1904-5  leaving  the  inhabitants  without  means  of  communication 
or  food.  During  the  past  winter  whole  tribes  have  died,  and 
members  of  the  Omolon  and  Oloiya  tribes,  when  facing  starva¬ 
tion,  assembled  in  council  and  decided  that  nothing  remained 
but  death.  They  agreed  that  each  head  of  a  family  should 
kill  his  wife  and  children  and  then  commit  suicide. 

The  tribesmen  gathered  on  a  plateau  covered  with  snow  and 
ice,  and  in  the  darkness  of  the  Arctic  winter  the  Spartan  de¬ 
cision  was  executed,  not  a  single  member  of  either  tribe  sur¬ 
viving. 

More  terrible  still  is  the  story  of  what  occurred  in  a  family 
of  the  Yukahir  tribe.  A  mother  and  nine  of  her  children  hav¬ 
ing  died  of  hunger,  the  father,  a  surviving  daughter,  and  a 
nephew,  lived  upon  the  remains,  and  when  they  were  consumed 
the  father  murdered  the  nephew. 

A  Russian  named  Dolganoff,  who  went  to  the  region  to  buy 
furs,  reported  the  situation  to  the  authorities  at  Yakutsk.  He 
entered  the  hut  of  a  Yukahir  family  while  the  latter  were 
eating  the  head  of  a  murdered  relative. 


Here  we  have  a  twofold  example — Human  Na¬ 
ture  and  Nature.  On  the  one  hand,  the  courage  of 
men  who  (savages  though  they  were),  under  the 
scourge  of  famine,  could  yet  die  men.  On  the  other, 
the  fearful  spectacle  of  human  beings,  under  this 
same  scourge,  driven  to  abandon  their  proper  hu¬ 
manity  and  sink  to  the  depths  of  bestiality.  We  can 
admire  the  one  group  and  pity  the  other, — but 
blame,  if  there  be  blame,  lies  not  at  the  door  of  the 
human  sufferers,  but  with  that  Nature  which  has 
brought  her  children  to  such  unnatural  straits. 

And  the  Lord  said :  “Because  the  cry  of  Sodom  and  Go¬ 
morrah  is  great,  and  because  their  sin  is  grievous,  I  will  go 
down  now,  and  see  whether  they  have  done  altogether  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  cry  of  it,  which  is  come  unto  me.” 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


173 


Then  the  Lord  rained  upon  Sodom  and  upon  Gomorrah  brim¬ 
stone  and  fire  from  the  Lord  out  of  heaven;  and  he  overthrew 
those  cities,  and  all  the  plain,  and  all  the  inhabitants  of  the 
cities,  and  that  which  grew  upon  the  ground. 


Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  Pompeii,  Martinique,  and 
the  towns  of  the  forests  of  the  Northwest, — is  it 
brimstone  and  fire  from  the  Lord  “because  their  sin 
is  grievous”  ?  Or  do  such  wholesale  and  meaningless 
slaughters  prove,  as  the  man  in  Kansas  believes, 
that  in  all  Nature  mankind  is  bereft  of  friendship, 
and  the  good  and  potent  God  is  but  a  myth?  Nowa¬ 
days  we  are  more  loath  than  were  our  fathers  to  cry 
out  upon  the  iniquity  of  men  because  they  are  found 
to  suffer. 

Fire,  Flood,  Famine,  Plague,  War — these  are  the 
cataclysms  that  sweep  away  tribes  and  cities  and 
nations,  and  of  these  only  the  last  can  be  laid  to  the 
authorship  of  man.  Our  race  is  precariously  ven¬ 
tured  amid  such  perils  and  furies  that  we  seem  to  be 
rather  the  toy  of  some  Cosmic  Beast  than  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  a  kindly  Providence.  Why,  only  today,  in 
China  there  is  Famine  and  Plague — parents  selling 
their  children,  men  dying  like  rats  in  their  holes  of 
the  ulcerous  pest,  throughout  the  land  the  odor  of 
burning  bodies  whereof  the  smoke  ascends  hourly  to 
Heaven, — so  that,  could  we  see  it,  in  the  presence  of 
such  awful  visitation  all  prejudice  of  white  and  yel¬ 
low  would  be  forgotten  and  there  would  remain 
with  us  only  the  consciousness  of  our  common  hu¬ 
manity  embarked  in  a  fearful  and  pitiful  struggle 
with  a  too  cruel  and  conquering  outer  Nature. 

In  matters  such  as  these,  distinctions  of  race  and 
nation  and  time  disappear.  We  are  in  the  presence 
of  an  elemental  Fact  ever  terribly  pertinent  to  our 


Fire, 

Flood, 

Plague, 

Famine, 

War 


174 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURh 


“The  Nature 
of  Things” 


Book  VI, 
1144f 


The  Plague 
at  Athens 


mortal  estate,  and  we  come,  it  seems  to  me,  as  near 
to  achieving  that  transmutation  of  the  temporal  into 
the  timeless,  which  the  Absolutist  Philosophers  give 
us  as  the  mark  of  their  Absolute  God,  as  it  is  likely 
to  be  given  us  to  come.  Certainly,  no  man  can  read 
the  verses  with  which  Lucretius  finds  it  fitting  to 
close  his  analysis  of  ‘‘the  Nature  of  Things”  without 
surrendering  all  account  of  time  and  distance  to  the 
present  sense  of  intolerable  disaster,  timelessly  em¬ 
poisoning  the  substance  of  the  world: 

Then  troop  on  troop  to  disease  and  death  they  fell : 

First  with  the  head  consumed  in  fiery  heats, 

Suffusing  flame  the  two  eyes  ruddying; 

Whilst  the  blackened  throat  did  sweat  and  ulcers  choked 
The  pathway  of  the  voice,  and  the  thick  tongue — 

That  erst  did  utter  forth  the  very  soul — 

Oozed  heavily  with  blood  and  clogged  with  pain; 

From  throat  to  breast,  and  thence  into  the  heart — 

The  heartsick  heart  itself, — till  the  strong  disease 
The  utmost  holds  of  life  had  broken  down. 

And  the  fetid  breath  did  issue  from  the  mouth 
Like  odors  of  decay  from  men  not  dead; 

And  strength  of  mind  with  strength  of  body  failed. 

Anguish  of  soul  companioning  with  pains 
Unbearable,  till  all  the  air  did  groan 
With  sobs  and  lamentations,  and  men  sank 
Like  suppliants  at  the  portal  of  the  tomb.  .  . 

And  bone  and  member  burning  with  disease, 

Some  to  chill  streams  their  naked  bodies  gave; 

While  into  deep  wells  still  others  headlong  plunged. 
Seeking,  with  mouth  agape,  the  cooling  spring, — 

Yet  such  their  thirst,  the  heavy  drafts  they  took, 

Bodies  immersed,  were  futile  as  salt  tears. 

As  tiny  hard-wrung  tears,  to  slake  desire; 

And  so  they  lay,  uneased  and  undone; 

Nor  heard  the  spells  low-muttered  in  dumb  fear 
O’er  sufferers  who  turned  their  pleading  eyes. 

Glamored  with  pain  and  reft  of  soothing  sleep. 

Where  over  all  Death  bore  his  lordly  sign.  .  . 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


175 


Amid  these  ills  was  one  ill  big  with  woe, 

With  piteous  woe,  how  each,  who  himself  beheld 
Tangled  with  weedy  death,  like  one  condemned 
Gave  over  hope  of  life  and  grieving  lay 
At  watch  for  spectral  Fate,  that  he  might  send 
His  spirit  forth  in  greeting.  And  in  sooth. 

Time  never  was  the  avid  plague  did  cease 
To  raven  on  men  as  men  were  woolly  flocks 
Or  horned  kine :  so  murder  multiplied. 

For  those,  death-fearful,  who  in  lust  of  life 
Fled  from  their  sick,  ’twas  but  a  little  time 
Ere  answering  vengeance  came  and  gave  them  up, 
Emptied  of  aid,  to  harsh  and  shameful  doom. 
Whereas  for  those  who  lingered  near,  of  toil 
And  dread  contagion  they  did  die,  all  they 
Whom  shame  compelled  to  hear  the  mingled  voice 
Of  plaintive  supplication  and  long  woe : 

Till  all  men  noble  thus  their  Lethe  found.  .  . 


Nor  burial  remained — that  sepulture 
Hallowed  in  the  city  from  of  old ; 

For  panic  was  on  all,  and  each  hurt  man 
Entombed  his  sacred  dead  as  best  he  could, — 
Though  more  there  were  more  horribly  persuaded. 
Who  clamoring,  upon  another’s  pyre 
Heaped  high  the  dismal  dead,  set  to  the  torch. 

And  oft  with  noisy  brawl  and  oft  with  blood 
They  wrangled  round  the  corpses  of  their  kin. 


VII 

Lucretius’  description  of  the  plague  at  Athens  is 
taken  almost  phrase  for  phrase  from  Thucydides’ 
more  coldly  dreadful  narrative  of  the  event.  ‘^As  to 
its  probable  origin  or  the  causes  which  might  or 
could  have  produced  such  a  disturbance  of  nature,” 
remarks  Thucydides,  ‘'every  man,  whether  a  physi¬ 
cian  or  not,  will  give  his  own  opinion.” 

Every  man  will  have  his  own  opinion.  We  know 
what  would  have  been  the  opinion  of  Eliphaz  the 


Optimo 
hoc  leti 
genus 


Thucydides, 
H.  xlvii-liii 


176 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Job’s 

comforters 


Wiggles- 
orth  of 
Boston 


Temanite,  and  Bildad  the  Shuhite,  and  Zophar  the 
Naamathite : 

Who  ever  perished  being  innocent?  or  where  were  the  right¬ 
eous  cut  off?  .  . 

Behold  God  will  not  cast  away  a  perfect  man,  neither  will 
he  help  the  evil  doers.  .  . 

What  is  man,  that  he  should  be  clean?  and  he  which  is  born 
of  a  woman,  that  he  should  be  righteous?  .  .  . 

His  bones  are  full  of  the  sin  of  his  youth,  which  shall  lie 
down  with  him  in  the  dust. 

We  know  this  opinion,  for  it  has  been  the  essential 
task  of  Christian  theolog}^  to  make  of  it  a  reasonable 
opinion.  All  the  pitiful  subtlety  of  Christian  logi¬ 
cians,  from  Origen  to  Jonathan  Edwards,  has  been 
spent  to  show  that  God’s  Will  is  throughout  just 
and  beneficent,  and  that  human  suffering  and  sin  is 
the  inevitable  outcome  of  the  creation  of  a  human 
will  in  the  image  of  the  Divine !  We  know  this  opin¬ 
ion,  and  the  degradations  of  sensibility  and  intelli¬ 
gence  to  which  it  has  reduced  human  minds :  “Babes, 
Thieves,  Bleathen,  and  Heretics”  is  the  title  of  a 
poem  published  by  Wigglesorth  of  Boston  in  1700, 
celebrating  the  hell  God  wills  for  the  unbaptized  and 
the  unclean,  for  little  children,  the  ignorant,  and  the 
outcast.^ 


4  Burton’s  Anatomy  (Partition  III,  Section  4,  Member  II)  contains 
some  pages  of  really  terrible  reading;  veiled  though  they  be  in  grotesque 
erudition,  these  pages  none  the  less  reveal  the  bared  teeth  of  fanaticism 
and  the  raw  wounds  of  despair.  Subsection  i,  of  this  Member,  con¬ 
cerns:  “Religious  Melancholy  in  Defect;  Parties  affected,  Epicures, 
Atheists,  Hypocrites,  worldly  secure,  Carnalists,  all  impious  Persons,  im¬ 
penitent  Sinners,  etc.”_  “That  grand  sin  of  atheism  or  impiety  .  .  .  . 
monstrosam  melancholiam”  appears  to  be  the  most  heinous  of  the 
offenses.  “  ‘It  cannot  stand  with  God’s  goodness,  protection,  and  provi¬ 
dence  (as  Saint  Chrysostom  in  the  Dialect  of  such  discontented  persons) 
to  see  and  suffer  one  man  to  be  lame,  another  mad,  a  third  poor  and 
miserable  all  the  days  of  his  life,  a  fourth  grievously  tormented  with 
sickness  and  aches,  to  his  last  hour.  Are  these  signs  and  works  of 
God’s  providence,  to  let  one  man  be  deaf,  another  dumb?  A  poor 
honest  fellow  lives  in  disgrace,  woe  and  want,  wretched  he  is;  when  as 
a  wicked  caitiff  abounds  in  superfluity  of  wealth,  keeps  whores,  parasites, 
and  what  he  will  himself’:  Audis,  Jupiter,  haec? .  Talia  multa  conr 
nectentes,  longum  reprehensionis  sermonem  erga  Dei  providentiam  con- 
texunt.  Thus  they  mutter  and  object  (see  the  rest  of  their  arguments 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


177 


We  know  this  opinion  well;  and  we  are  only  less 
familiar  with  that  of  Elihu  the  son  of  Barachel : 

Behold  God  is  great,  and  we  know  him  not,  neither  can  the 

number  of  his  years  be  searched  out .  With  God  is 

terrible  majesty! 

Jehovah  himself  is  not  unmindful  of  the  advantages 
of  Elihu’s  point  of  view;  for  it  is  this  which  he 
assumes  in  reproving  his  servant  Job  (preliminary, 
to  be  sure,  to  making  things  right  with  Job)  : 

Where  wast  thou  when  I  laid  the  foundations  of  the  earth? 
declare,  if  thou  hast  understanding. 

Who  hath  laid  the  measures  thereof,  if  thou  knowest?  or 
who  hath  stretched  the  line  upon  it? 

Whereupon  are  the  foundations  thereof  fastened?  or  who 
laid  the  cornerstone  thereof  : 

When  the  morning  stars  sang  together,  and  all  the  sons  of 
God  shouted  for  joy?  .  .  . 

Doth  the  eagle  mount  up  at  thy  command,  and  make  her  nest 
on  high? 

She  dwelleth  and  abideth  on  the  rock,  upon  the  crag  of  the 
rock,  and  the  strong  place. 


in  Mersennus  in  Genesin,  and  in  Campanella,  amply  confuted),  with 
many  such  vain  cavils,  well  known,  not  worthy  the  recapitulation  or 
answering;  whatsoever  they  pretend,  they  are  interim  of  little  or  no 
religion,’' 

It  is  an  easy  confutation!  and  of  a  kind  which  theologians  have  begun 
to  find  ineffectual, — though  in  Burton’s  day  there  were,  of  course,  other 
persuasions  than  reason.  "‘Instar  omnium,  the  most  copious  confuter  of 
atheists,”  says  Burton,  “is  Marinus  Mersennus  in  his  Commentaries  on 
Genesis;  with  Campanella’s  Atheismus  Triumphatus.  He  sets  down  at 
large  the  causes  of  this  brutish  passion  (seventeen  in  number  I  take  it), 
answers  all  their  arguments  and  sophisms,  which  he  reduceth  to  twenty- 
six  heads,  proving  withal  his  own  assertion:  ‘There  is  a  God,  such  a 
God,  the  true  and  sole  God,’  by  thirty-five  reasons.  His  Colophon  is 
how  to  resist  and  repress  atheism  and  to  that  purpose  he  adds  four 
especial  means  or  ways,  which  whoso  will  may  profitably  peruse.” 

An  interesting  side-light  upon  the  genial  personality  of  this  Marinus 
Mersennus,  and  incidentally  a  notion  of  some  of  the  atheistical  “argu¬ 
ments  and  sophisms,”  appears  in  another  “Subsection”;  “Mersennus, 
says  our  author,  “makes  mention  of  a  desperate  friend  of  his,  whom, 
amongst  others,  he  came  to  visit  and  exhort  to  patience,  that  broke  out 
into  most  blasphemous  atheistical  speeches,  too  fearful  to  relate,  when 
they  wished  him  to  trust  in  God,  Quis  est  ille  Deus  (inquit)  ut  serviam 
illi,  quid  proderit  si  oraverim;  si  praesens  est,  cur  non  succurritf  cur 
non  me  carcare,  inedia,  squalore  confectum  liberat?  quid  ego  feci? 
&c.,  absit  a  me  hujusniodi  Deus.  Another  of  his  acquaintance  broke 
out  into  like  atheistical  blasphemies,  upon  his  wife’s  death  raved,  cursed, 
said  and  did  he  cared  not  what.  And  so  for  the  most  part  it  is  with 

them  all . ”  We  can  imagine  what  sort  of  a  Job’s  comforter  this 

Mersennus  was!  Rather  than  accompany^  such  Christian  reasoners  to 
their  salvation  most  of  us  would  choose,  I  imagine,  the  company  of  those 
“impenitent  sinners  that  go  to  hell  in  a  lethargy,”  as  Burton  puts  it. 


\Vith  God 
is  terrible 
majesty 


178 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Moslem 

fatalism 


The  mood 
of  devotion 


From  thence  she  seeketh  the  prey,  and  her  eyes  behold 
afar  off. 

Her  young  ones  also  suck  up  blood :  and  where  the  slain 
are,  there  is  she.  .  .  . 

Shall  he  that  contendeth  with  the  Almighty  instruct  him?  he 
that  reproveth  God,  let  him  answer  it. 

The  whole  Mohammedan  world  has  adopted  the 
attitude  of  Elihu.  “God  wills  it,”  is  the  answer  to 
every  affliction  and  the  excuse  for  every  atrocity. 
Human  reason  abnegates  its  proper  function;  and 
with  reason  departs  humanity.  Job  was  never  more 
bereft  of  comfort  than  is  Moslem  theology  of  gen¬ 
tleness  and  nobility. 

Fatalism  in  the  East,  Diabolism  in  the  West, — to 
such  pass  are  we  brought  when  the  theologian  rea¬ 
sons  with  suffering!  In  order  to  maintain  the  purity 
of  God,  the  virtue  of  man  is  denied;  and  only  a 
merciful  grace  from  above  can  effect  his  salvation. 
The  physicians,  says  Thucydides,  were  among  the 
first  victims  of  the  plague;  and  those  who  nursed 
the  sick,  “especially  those  who  aspired  to  heroism,” 
all  died. 

Optimus  hoc  leti  genus  ergo  quisque  subibat, — 

Lucretius  puts  it :  fihe  nobler  men  suffered  this  man¬ 
ner  of  death.’  Job’s  comforters  andEhristian  the- 
ologists  would  have  seen  no  noble  men;  and  the 
Oriental  would  not  have  cared. 

VIII 

There  is  a  certain  ideal  of  the  religious  mind,  es¬ 
sentially  a  mood  of  devotion  rather  than  a  theologi¬ 
cal  insight,  with  which  I  have  profound  sympathy. 
This  is  the  ideal  of  the  spirit  at  peace :  unquestioning 
and  unwavering  trust  in  a  Power  benignly  removed 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


179 


from  human  pain  and  puzzle,  yet  solicitously  provi¬ 
dent  of  men’s  destinies  and  tenderly  compassionate 
of  the  least  of  mortal  ills, — faith  in  an  All-Wise  Faith  and 
Father,  whose  hurt  is  but  a  kindly  cure,  who  chas-  at^p^ce 
teneth  whom  he  loveth,  whose  mercy  endureth  for¬ 
ever, — faith  in  a  Father’s  Wisdom, — faith,  and  the 
soul  at  peace. 

The  charm  in  this  ideal  can  hardly  fail  to  appeal 
to  any  man  long  beset  with  the  futility  of  human 
reasonings  or  over-wearied  with  the  tale  of  human 
blind  endeavors.  It  is  an  ideal  which  has  very 
much  in  common  with  that  of  ‘Teturn  to  Nature”; 
there  is  the  same  relinquishment  of  the  distinctively 
human  interests,  the  same  turning  from  participa¬ 
tion  in  affairs  to  restful  contemplation  of  that  which 
needs  nor  change  nor  emendation,  the  same  sense  of 
being  caught  up  into  the  luminous  tranquillity  of  un¬ 
sullied  heavens.  What  is  peculiar  to  the  religious 
view  is  the  sympathetic  friendliness  which  it  gives  to 
Nature,  the  Fatherliness  of  the  God  for  whom  Na¬ 
ture  is  but  the  outer  expression  and  the  cloak :  not 
the  veiled  face  of  the  Almighty,  but  the  veiled  face 
of  the  All-Compassionate. 

Before  it  was  Christian  this  ideal  was  Hebrew, 
and  Greek  as  well  as  Hebrew.  It  was  not  Hellenic 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  great  thought  of  Plato  and 
Aristotle  was  Hellenic;  but  it  entered  early  into 
Greek  conception  and  gathered  in  intensity  as  men’s 
hopes  found  less  and  less  to  support  them  in  this 
world,  and  turned  more  and  more  to  the  regard  of  a 
world  withdrawn.  In  the  very  morning  of  Greek 
philosophy,  mid  the  flux  and  inconstancy  of  sense, 

Heraclitus  found  one  thing  whereto  the  understand- 

ing  man  could  strongly  cleave,  one  thing  flxed  and  philosophy 


Heraclitus 


Cleanthes 


180  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

constant — the  living  law  of  Nature :  “for  sustaining 
all  human  laws  is  one,  the  Law  Divine,  which  pre- 
vaileth  where  it  will,  and  sufficeth  for  all,  and  sur- 
passeth  all.”  “The  many  live  as  if  they  possessed  a 
wisdom  peculiarly  their  own” ;  and  “they  deem  some 
things  just  and  some  unjust,  but  to  God  all  things 
are  beautiful  and  good  and  just.” 

With  trust  in  a  providential  law  Heraclitus  thus 
combines  an  intellectual,  moral  and  aesthetic  percep¬ 
tion  of  Nature’s  inward  harmony.  These  two  moods 
of  thought — Providence  and  Harmony — are  the 
prime  indices  to  that  whole  Stoic  aloofness  from  the 
world  in  which  the  nobler  minds  of  antiquity  sought 
seclusion,  as  generation  by  generation  men  sank  into 
sorrier  ways.  The  idea  of  an  ultimate  point  of  view 
reconciling  the  inconsistencies  and  conflicts  of  our 
partial  experience  of  life  in  one  all-conquering  Har¬ 
mony  is  a  Greek  and  intellectualist  addition  to  the 
abnegate  faith  which  we  find  in  the  Hebrew  Orien¬ 
tal,  serving  to  define  the  object  of  this  faith;  and  it 
is  from  the  Greek  rather  than  from  the  Hebrew  that 
we  derive  the  Christian  notion  of  the  inclusive  wis¬ 
dom  of  Providence.  Stoic  and  Hebrew  alike  em¬ 
phasize  man’s  ignorance  and  need  for  trust,  but  the 
Hebrew  rests  his  faith  in  an  ultimate  Power,  the 
Greek  in  an  eventual  Insight  into  cosmic  order. 

Thou  knowest  to  make  straight  the  crooked  ways, 

And  what  to  us  is  Chaos,  unto  Thee 

Is  Order,  and  lovely  all  unloveliness.  .  . 

Thus  sings  Cleanthes  (boxer  turned  Stoic),  voicing 
the  Stoic  conviction  of  the  final  reasonableness  and 
beauty  of  Nature,  which  could  make  of  Nature’s 
harmony  a  worthy  object  of  human  trust.  We  have 
carried  the  idea  over  into  our  own  view, — but  could 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


181 


this  alone  give  quietistic  peace?  Nay,  there  is 
another  element,  fundamental  alike  with  Hebrew 
and  Stoic  and  Christian :  the  utter  trust  itself, — 

Lead  me,  O  Zeus,  lead  thou  me  on ! 

By  ways  soe’er  Thy  wisdom  hath  ordained, 

Lead  me,  O  Zeus ! 

I  will  not  fail ;  or  if  by  weakness  stained, 

My  faltering  will  by  Thy  Will  be  constrained  1 
Lead  me,  O  Zeus !  ® 

Is  not  the  devotion  of  the  reformed  boxer,  despite 
the  difference  of  centuries  and  of  creeds,  the  same 
beautiful  faith  which  inspires  that  finest  of  our 
modern  English  hymns  ? 

Lead,  kindly  Light,  amid  th’  encircling  gloom. 

Lead  thou  me  onl 

The  night  is  dark,  and  I  am  far  from  home; 

Lead  thou  me  on! 

Keep  thou  my  feet;  I  do  not  ask  to  see 

The  distant  scene ;  one  step  enough  for  me. 

Is  it  not  the  same  devotion,  spoken  again  and  again, 
by  Pagan  and  by  Christian,  wherever  man  has  felt 
at  once  the  need  and  the  presence  of  a  controlling 
and  consoling  Power, — spoken  again  and  again, 
though  never,  by  merely  mortal  lips,  more  nobly 
than  in  the  great  words  of  the  greatest  of  religious 
poets : 

E  la  sua  volontate  e  nostra  pace.  .  . 

“His  Will  is  our  Peace: 

“It  is  that  Sea  whereunto  all  things  move — 

“All  things  that  He  creates,  and  Nature’s  all!’’ 

IX 

And  yet, — can  we  stop  here  without  the  vision  of 
India? 

c  Von  Arnim,  Stoicorum  V eterum  Fragmenta,  fr.  527. 

13 


Prayer 
to  Zeus 


Cardinal 

Newman 


Dante 


182 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Brahma 


Buddha 


Macbeth 


“The  shining  drop  slips  into  the  shining  sea.  .  . 

The  shining  drop  slips  into  the  shining  sea.  . 

I  seem  to  see  a  thousand  times  a  thousand  yogins, 
sitting  immutable  in  the  scorching  sun,  muttering 
their  ancient  formulas :  to  their  eyes  the  pageant  of 
life  is  like  a  wavering  mirage  sprung  from  the  heat 
and  distances  of  the  desert;  and  to  their  ears  the 
timbrels  of  wild  devotees  and  the  plaintive  wailing 
of  children  in  famine  alike  sound  distant  and  mean¬ 
ingless.  Joy  is  illusion;  pain  is  illusion;  life  is  illu¬ 
sion.  .  .  .  ‘The  shining  drop  slips  into  the  shin¬ 
ing  sea.  .  .  .  ’  And  answering  these  are  the  disci¬ 

ples  of  Buddha,  seeking  eternal  somnolence.  ‘Om 
mani  padme  hum.  .  .  .  Om  mani  padme  hum. 

.  .  .  ‘O  the  Sacred  Jewel  in  the  Lotus.  .  .  .  O 
the  Sacred  Jewel  in  the  Lotus.  .  .  Om  mani 

padme  hum.  .  •.  Joy  is  illusion;  pain  is  illusion; 
life  is  illusion.  ‘Om  mani  padme  hum.  .  .  .’ 

Better  be  with  the  dead, 

Whom  we  to  gain  our  peace,  have  sent  to  peace, 

Than  on  the  torture  of  the  mind  to  lie 
In  restless  ecstacy.  Duncan  is  in  his  grave; 

After  life’s  fitful  fever  he  sleeps  well; 

Treason  has  done  his  worst;  nor  steel,  nor  poison, 
Malice  domestic,  foreign  levy,  nothing 
Can  touch  him  further. 

The  ideal  of  peace,  at  the  last,  resolves  into  an  ideal¬ 
ization  of  the  immutability  of  the  tomb.  First,  the 
material  man,  appetite  and  desire,  must  be  slaught¬ 
ered;  then,  by  slow  surgeries,  the  sensibilities  must 
be  destroyed ;  the  will  must  be  effaced ;  and  finally, 
intelligence  itself  must  shrink  to  senile  inactivity. 
This  is  the  ascetic  prescription,  which  denies  a  man’s 
right  to  be  a  proper  man.  It  is  the  cure  of  evil 
offered  by  all  those,  who,  flinching  the  hardship  of 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


183 


thought,  point  the  way  of  peace  through  self-surren¬ 
der  and  self-mutilation.  It  is  the  insight  of  the  phi¬ 
losophers  of  the  Universal  and  the  Absolute,  who 
know  no  better  bliss  than  oblivescence  of  humanity. 
‘‘Go  ye,”  they  say,  “to  the  dead  for  counsel!  Go  ye 
to  the  canny  dead,  and  they  will  give,  with  shrewd 
low-lidded  eyes,  effectual  counsel  1” 

I  remember  a  story  of  Aguinaldo’s  men :  how  they 
captured  a  Spanish  officer  whom  they  had  come  to 
hate;  and  they  amputated  his  feet,  and  they  cut  off 
his  hands,  and  they  tore  out  his  tongue,  and  they 
blinded  his  eyes, — carefully,  surgically,  they  did 
these  things, — and  then  they  returned  his  still 
breathing  and  pulsating  body  to  his  Spanish  com¬ 
rades — encased  in  a  coffin,  they  returned  it.  And 
this  is  what  the  idealists  demand  of  us ;  that  we  am¬ 
putate  desire,  that  we  blind  sense,  and  obliterate 
personality,  that  our  spiritual  carcase  may  find  peace 
in  the  Absolute ! 

I  know  that  there  have  been  brave  attempts  to 
find  man’s  best  humanity  even  in  its  deprivation, — 
none  better  nor  braver  than  that  of  Josiah  Royce. 
“Your  sufferings  are  God’s  sufferings,”  he  says ;  “I 
hold  that  God  willingly,  freely,  and  consciously  suf¬ 
fers  in  us  when  we  suffer,  and  that  our  grief  is  his.” 
God  suffers,  too,  and  necessarily, — that  is  our  conso¬ 
lation.  But  is  God’s  suffering  like  our  suffering? 
No,  indeed! 

What  you  mean  when  you  say  that  evil  in  this  temporal 
world  ought  not  to  exist,  and  ought  to  be  suppressed,  is  simply 
what  God  means  by  seeing  that  evil  ought  to  be  and  is  end¬ 
lessly  thwarted,  endured,  but  subordinated.  In  the  natural 
world  you  are  the  minister  of  God’s  triumph.  Your  deed  is 
his.  You  can  never  clean  the  world  of  evil ;  but  you  can  sub¬ 
ordinate  evil.  The  justification  of  the  presence  in  the  world 


Philoso¬ 
phers  of  the 
Absolute 


Filipino 

vengeance 


Royce  on 

spiritual 

courage 


184 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Salvation 
through  the 
Universal 


God’s 

eternity 


of  the  morally  evil  becomes  apparent  to  us  mortals  only  in  so 
far  as  this  evil  is  overcome  and  condemned.  It  exists  only 
that  it  may  be  cast  down.  Courage,  then,  for  God  works  in 
you.  In  the  order  of  time  you  embody  in  outer  acts  what  is 
for  him  the  truth  of  his  eternity. 

This,  in  its  most  modern  form,  is  the  last  word  of 
Greek  intellect.  Salvation  through  the  Universal! 
Plato,  Plotinus,  Erigena,  Spinoza,  Hegel:  we  call 
its  long  historic  roll,  and  at  the  first  and  at  the  last 
the  idea  is  the  same.  Gain  ye  but  God’s  perspective, 
but  see  the  world  as  the  eternal  and  timeless  sees  it, 
and  all  its  imperfection  is  medicined  away.  Be  ye 
gods,  and  ye  are  saved ! 

It  is  a  brave  attempt,  and  perhaps  it  will  give 
strength  to  the  strong :  what  to  you  seem  conquering 
ills,  to  God  are  but  evils  thwarted — out  of  space,  out 
of  time.  But  can  the  logic  of  the  superhuman  an¬ 
swer  the  argument  of  the  human  drama?  What, 
think  you,  would  have  been  the  opinion  of  those 
starving  Chukchis  of  the  frozen  tundras  as  they 
marched  forth  in  the  Arctic  night  to  their  tribal  sui¬ 
cide?  Would  they  have  seen  evil  eternally  thwarted, 
eternally  overcome,  themselves  the  ministers  of 
God’s  triumph?  An  African  explorer  tells  how  he 
found  the  remnants  of  a  once  powerful  nation  in¬ 
habiting  a  miasmic  swamp,  their  last  refuge  from 
cannibal  enemies;  they  lived  in  mud  hovels;  their 
sustenance  was  vermin  and  the  roots  they  grubbed 
from  the  mud;  the  arts  in  which  once  they  excelled 
were  lost ;  intelligence  was  dead  in  them ;  and  every 
man,  woman  and  child  in  the  tribe  was  blotched  with 
a  fungous  leprosy.  Are  men  such  as  these  the  outer 
embodiment  of  the  truth  of  God’s  eternity? 

There  have  been  times  in  the  history  of  mankind, 
— times  we  should  not  forget,  for  it  may  be  that 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


185 


their  like  is  to  come  again, — when  sects  and  peo¬ 
ples  have  seen  in  the  world  an  arena  for  the  display 
of  the  masterfulness  of  the  Devil  rather  than  a 
throne  for  the  majesty  of  God.  The  Ophites  conse¬ 
crated  their  devotions  to  the  Wisdom  of  the  Serpent, 
and  earned  the  title  of  devil-worshipers :  but  who 
shall  say  that  in  their  day  they  were  not  justified? 
Parkman  somewhere  tells  of  the  finding  of  a  broken 
tribe  of  Florida  Indians :  they  had  been  missionized 
by  Spanish  Jesuits;  and  afterwards  their  women  and 
their  children  and  their  strong  young  men  had  been 
carried  off  by  Spanish  overlords  to  slavery  in  the 
Indies ;  and  when  they  were  found  again,  those  who 
escaped,  they  had  slain  the  priests  and  were  worship¬ 
ing  with  fervent  devotion  that  Satan  whom,  they 
said,  the  God  of  the  Spaniards  hated. 

Today  we  are  a  triumphant  people;  ours  is  a  tri¬ 
umphant  civilization;  we  are  strong  in  our  grip  on 
Nature,  and  we  look  forward  with  lustful  eyes  to 
illimitable  conquests.  In  the  exaltation  of  our  sense 
of  progress,  it  is  easy  for  us  to  see  evil  overcome 
and  condemned,  to  believe  that  it  exists  only  to  be 
cast  down,  only  to  make  trial  of  our  superb  strength 
and  glorify  our  prowess  by  example.  .This  is  easy 
for  us  of  today;  but  may  we  not  fairly  ask,  can  it 
be  so  forever? 

I  remember  once  opening  an  intolerable  book — a 
German  book  it  was, — giving  faithful  and  unimagi¬ 
native  details  of  the  great  natural  fact  of  degen¬ 
eracy.  There  were  colored  plates  representing 
transitional  forms  between  the  animal  and  the  vege¬ 
table,  and  plates  portraying  decaying  animal  forms, 
as  it  were,  reassuming  vegetal  characteristics.  And 
there  were  representations  and  descriptions  of  man- 


Devil- 

worship 


Degeneracy 


186 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Earth 
must  die 


Schopen¬ 

hauer 


born  creatures  which  were  animal  monstrosities  and 
vegetable  monstrosities.  I  closed  that  book  hur¬ 
riedly;  but  I  cannot  forget  it.  For  it  foretold  an 
inevitable  time — millions  of  years  hence,  perhaps,— 
when  the  light  of  reason  must  fade  from  the  human 
eye,  the  erect  figure  stoop  and  slink,  and  the  great 
utterance  of  the  human  voice — animi  inter  pres — 
give  way  to  senile  mouthings.  It  foretold  this  time, 
inevitable  to  the  mortal  denizens  of  a  mortal  Planet, 
save  it  be,  ere  the  hour  approach,  our  children’s  chil¬ 
dren  shall  march  forth  upon  the  chilling  deserts,  and 
there,  in  the  twilight  of  the  dying  sun,  like  the  Chuk- 
chis  of  the  Arctic,  fathers  shall  slay  their  children, 
husbands  their  wives,  and  the  men  die  men. 

We  know  our  Schopenhauer.  The  Will  to  Live 
is  a  blind  and  striving  will,  through  the  ages  winning 
its  laborious  way  to  a  dearly  bought  intelligence. 
And  when  it  attains  this,  when  at  the  last  in  the  light 
of  reason  it  beholds  its  own  realized  intention;  then 
it  perceives  the  appalling  diabolism  of  Nature — how 
its  own  desires  are  created  to  become  a  mockery  of 
themselves  and  its  every  ideal  foredoomed  to  hollow¬ 
ness  and  defeat.  Reason  is  the  nightmare  of  Reality, 
and  the  Will  to  Live,  having  given  birth  to  reason, 
becomes  transmuted  into  a  Will  to  Die. 

The  ideal  of  peace  is  a  beautiful  and  consoling 
ideal;  and  the  mood  of  trust  in  an  all-puissant  and 
all-fatherly  God  is  a  sweet  and  comforting  mood. 
But  there  are  times  when  we  feel  the  sting  of  life, 
and  the  strivings  of  life,  and  the  humanness  of  life 
too  keenly  to  maintain  this  ideal  or  to  endure  this 
mood.  And  in  the  bitterness  of  our  sense  of  our 
own  humanity,  we  cry  out  against  those  who  come 
to  us  saying,  ‘Peace,  peace,’  where  there  is  no  peace. 


Homo  sum 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


187 


Homo  Slim!  I  am  a  man ;  let  the  World  deal  with  me 
as  a  man,  and  I  will  return  unto  it  a  Man’s  measure ! 

X 

But  there  is  another  version  of  the  ideal  of  peace. 
It  finds  its  realization  not  in  the  consolations  of  faith 
but  in  the  imperturbableness  of  the  contemplative 
mind.  It  exalts  reason  over  revelation,  and  finds  in 
reason  a  special  type  of  resignation.  It  is  material¬ 
istic  rather  than  spiritualistic,  aesthetic  rather  than 
moral.  It  reduces  desire  to  curiosity,  energy  to 
patience,  and  it  finds  the  quintessence  of  our  nature 
in  a  kind  of  glorified  and  bloodless  sanity.  Science 
is  its  inspiration  and  science  its  end,  and  its  fee¬ 
ble  enthusiasms  expend  themselves  in  analytical  re¬ 
arrangements  of  the  items  of  knowledge.  At  its 
strongest,  it  develops  a  vague  devotion  to  Truth 
(felt  to  be  rather  the  better  for  being  unattainable) ; 
while  at  its  weakest,  it  is  spent  in  dilettante  inter¬ 
jections  over  the  cosmic  bric-a-brac. 

Materialism  (writes  Santayana)  has  its  distinct  aesthetic 
and  emotional  colour,  though  this  may  be  strangely  affected  and 
even  reversed  by  contrast  with  systems  of  an  incongruous  hue, 
jostling  it  accidentally  in  a  confused  and  amphibious  mind. 
If  you  are  in  the  habit  of  believing  in  special  providences,  or 
of  expecting  to  continue  your  romantic  adventures  in  a  second 
life,  materialism  will  dash  your  hopes  most  unpleasantly,  and 
you  may  think  for  a  year  or  two  that  you  have  nothing  left 
to  live  for.  But  a  thorough  materialist,  one  born  to  the  faith 
and  not  half  plunged  into  it  by  an  unexpected  christening  in 
cold  water,  will  be  like  the  superb  Democritus,  a  laughing 
philosopher.  His  delight  in  a  mechanism  that  can  fall  into  so 
many  marvellous  and  beautiful  shapes,  and  can  generate  so 
many  exciting  passions,  should  be  of  the  same  intellectual  qual¬ 
ity  as  that  which  the  visitor  feels  in  a  museum  of  natural  his¬ 
tory,  where  he  views  the  myriad  butterflies  in  their  cases,  the 
flamingoes  and  shell-fish,  the  mammoths  and  gorillas.  Doubt- 


Bloodless 

sanity 


The  Life 
of  Reason 


The  new 
Democritus 


Lessing 
on  stony 
laughter 


188  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

less  there  were  pangs  in  that  incalculable  life,  but  they  were 
soon  over;  and  how  splendid  meantime  was  the  pageant,  how 
infinitely  interesting  the  universal  interplay,  and  how  foolish 
and  inevitable  those  absolute  little  passions. 

This  is  the  new  ideal — the  ideal  of  the  intellectual, 
the  aesthete.  He  would  wander  (safe  as  well  as 
sane)  down  the  polished  corridors  of  a  polished  life, 
and  study  the  displays.  He  would  enjoy  the  bur¬ 
nished  iridescences  of  the  winged  butterflies,  and 
would  speculate,  smiling  curiously  to  himself,  the 
tremor  of  their  frail  tropical  pinions  in  the  sudden 
net.  Smiling,  he  would  see  in  his  mind’s  eye  the  odd 
movements  of  the  bright  flamingo;  and  smiling,  he 
would  harken  with  an  inward  ear  the  agonized 
trumpetings  of  the  embogged  mammoth.  “Those 
absolute  little  passions,”  he  would  muse;  and  with  a 
faint  thrill  he  would  turn,  still  smiling,  to  felicitate 
the  genial  chance  that  had  made  him  other  than  the 
black  gorilla.  He  would  be  “like  the  superb  Democ¬ 
ritus,  a  laughing  philosopher” ;  for  “against  the  ver¬ 
biage  by  which  man  persuades  himself  that  he  is  the 
goal  and  acme  of  the  universe,  laughter  is  the  proper 
defence.” 

Lessing  remarks  that  La  Mettrie,  who  had  had 
himself  painted  and  carved  as  a  second  Democritus, 
is  seen  as  laughing  only  the  first  time ;  seen  often,  in 
place  of  the  laughing  philosopher  appears  the  grin¬ 
ning  fool.  It  is  all  well  enough  to  tell  us  that  “laugh¬ 
ter  need  not  remain  without  an  overtone  of  sympa¬ 
thy”;  but  the  music  of  life  is  not  so  composed; 
rather,  it  is  built  upon  life’s  fundamentals ;  and  mere 
dissonance  is  mere  noise.  No  doubt  there  is  great 
amusement  to  be  had  from  the  caper ings  of  the 
scourged  clown;  no  doubt  there  is  a  fine  compla- 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


189 


cency  in  feeling  one’s  self  initiate  into  the  cosmic 
jest;  but  it  is  only  Mephistopheles  who  is  seen  always 
smiling. 

In  the  presence  of  rident  materialism  I  can  but 
agree  with  Sir  Thomas  Browne :  “Democritus,  that 
thought  to  laugh  the  times  into  goodness,  seems  to 
me  as  deeply  hypochondriack  as  Heraclitus,  that  be¬ 
wailed  them.”  You  cannot  laugh  evil  into  goodness 
any  more  than  you  can  obliterate  it  by  self-surren- 
.  der ;  and  surely  a  sardonic  wisdom  is  no  nobler  than 
a  foolish  faith. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  another  way  of  viewing  the 
matter — Montaigne’s  way : 

Alter 

Ridebat,  quoties  a  limine  moverat  unum 
Protuleratque  pedem ;  flebat  contrarius  alter. 

‘T  like  better  the  first  humor,”  says  Montaigne;  “not 
because  it  is  more  agreeable  to  laugh  than  to  weep, 
but  because  it  is  more  disdainful,  and  condemns  us 
more  than  the  other ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  we  can 
never  be  so  scorned  as  we  merit.  Pity  and  com¬ 
miseration  are  mingled  with  some  esteem  for  the 
thing  that  is  pitied;  things  which  one  mocks  are 
things  of  no  value.  I  do  not  think  that  there  is  so 
much  ill  in  us  as  there  is  vanity,  so  much  malice  as 
stupidity :  we  are  less  filled  with  evil  than  with 
inanity;  we  are  less  wretched  than  we  are  vile.” 

But  Montaigne’s  view  is  as  theological  as  it  is 
inhuman;  materialism  has  no  such  theological  ex¬ 
cuse  for  inhumanity.  If  one’s  reason  constrains  one 
to  materialism,  let  it  at  least  be  a  dignified  and  sym¬ 
pathetic  and  human  materialism, — 

Nothing  extenuate 
Nor  set  down  aught  in  malice, — 


The 

Laughing 
and  the 
Weeping 
Philosophers 


Montaigne 


Othello 


190 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Book  IT 
323f 


Recapitula¬ 

tion 


Acts  of 
Providence 


then  shall  we  speak  simply  and  nobly,  as  Lucretius 
spoke,  viewing  life’s  battles  and  shipwrecks  from 
afar,  but  intimately  viewing  them,  too,  in  the  keen¬ 
ness  of  mortal  commiseration.  .  . 

J 

Yea,  as  when  mighty  legions  fill  the  plain 
With  course  and  charge  and  image  of  bright  war 
Whose  sheen  strikes  heaven,  while  all  the  earth  around 
Glitters  with  brass  and  shakes  with  the  tramp  of  men; 

And  the  smitten  hills  up  to  the  very  stars 
Echo  their  shoutings,  and  the  spacious  fields 
Quake  with  the  sudden  onset  of  the  horse : 

E’en  so,  there  is  a  station  mid  the  hills. 

High  over  all,  wherefrom  the  turmoil  seems 
But  as  a  silver  glamour  o’er  the  plain. 

XI 

I  have  reached  iii  my  discussion  a  perspective  that 
permits  recapitulation. 

We  set  out  with  the  broad  incongruity  of  the  the¬ 
ory  of  a  competent  Providence  and  the  fact  of 
material  disaster.  We  acknowledged  the  naturalness 
of  the  inference  from  this  incongruity  that  (in  the 
words  of  the  Kansas  man)  '‘gods  and  souls  do  not 
exist.”  We  owned  also — what  the  Kansan  and  the 
Epicurean  alike  had  thought  out — the  dark  deeds  to 
which  superstition  has  given  rise;  and  we  asked 
whether,  in  view  of  the  terrible  cost  in  human  suf¬ 
fering  of  what  we  call  human  progress,  there  might 
not  be  some  justification  for  the  long-seated  notion 
that  man  is  essentially  evil,  and  that  it  is  the  taint 
of  his  evil  will  which  has  given  rise  to  all  the  ills 
that  assail  the  world.  Christian  and  Stoic  alike,  we 
found,  maintained  this  view  in  dark  moments  of 
human  history,  and  alike  urged  for  its  cure  refuge 
in  that  wider  and  more  inclusive  Nature  of  which 
man’s  is  only  a  minor  incident.  Yet  when  we  came 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


191 


more  closely  to  examine  this  wider  Nature,  we  did 
not  find  therein  an  unsullied  and  undimmed  Ely¬ 
sium  ;  on  the  contrary,  we  found  that  it,  as  well  as 
man’s  nature,  displays  a  brutality  that  is  nothing 
short  of  manifest  diabolism.  We  declined,  there¬ 
fore,  to  follow  that  theology  of  Job’s  comforters 
which  shifts  the  responsibility  for  evil  entirely  to 
man’s  shoulders ;  and  we  declined  also  to  surrender 
our  human  right  to  reason  in  favor  of  an  incompre¬ 
hensibly  just  and  beneficent  Providence,  a  view 
which  is  equally  complacent  of  Mohammedan  fatal¬ 
ism  and  Calvinistic  election  and  damnation. 

We  then  proceeded  to  consider  the  reasonings 
which  have  endeavored  to  explain  our  perception  of 
ill  as  an  illusion  of  perspective,  and  which  have 
sought  the  cure  of  this  illusion  in  the  peace  of  mind 
that  comes  from  faith  in  an  eventual  revelation  of 
righteousness  in  all  that  now  seems  to  us  unright¬ 
eous,  or  again  comes  from  hope  of  an  eventual  ab¬ 
sorption  amounting  to  annihilation, — respectively, 
the  Christian  and  Buddhist  salvations.  But  in  the 
ideal  of  peace  we  found  no  lasting  peace,  nor  aught 
save  an  ascetic  mutilation  of  our  proper  humanity; 
and  when  we  turned  from  this  to  the  Epicurean 
ideal  of  an  aesthetically  intellectual  contemplation  of 
Nature,  we  found  there  only  another  and  a  more 
odious  type  of  self-mutilation.  Beauty  seemed  to  us 
possible  only  when  joined  with  a  sympathetic  under¬ 
standing  of  suffering. 

Thus  we  find:  (1)  In  his  primitive  reaction  to 
the  fact  of  evil,  man  seeks  to  account  for  it  on  moral 
grounds :  he  explains  all  suffering  as  the  outcome  of 
his  own  immorality  and  sin,  and  he  justifies  it  as 
being  a  divinely  inflicted  retribution  for  his  corrup- 


Nature 

no 

Elysium 


Christian 

and 

Buddhist 

Salvations 


Explana¬ 
tions  of 
evil : 

(1)  Moral 


192 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


(2) 

Confusion 
of  moral 
and 

aesthetic 


(3) 

Esthetic 


tion  and  wickedness.  (2)  In  a  more  reflective  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  problem,  he  tries  to  explain  away 
evil.  It  is,  he  says,  only  relatively  a  fact.  It  is  the 
condition,  in  itself  negative,  without  which  could  not 
be  that  goodness  and  beauty  which  make  Creation  in 
God’s  eye  the  very  figure  of  perfection.  This  expla¬ 
nation  confuses  moral  with  (Esthetic  reasons.  Evil 
as  seen  by  man  appears  positive;  salvation  consists 
in  faith  that  to  God  this  positive  evil  is  presented  as 
overcome,  hence  as  negative.  Here  we  have  the 
moral  reason  at  work.  Evil  as  seen  by  God  is  that 
element  of  antithesis  which  makes  possible  the  dis¬ 
play  of  the  divine  goodness;  it  is  the  stroke  of  com¬ 
position  which  illumines  the  picture  with  perfection ; 
it  is  negative,  to  be  sure,  but  its  negativity  is  that  of 
the  contrary,  not  that  of  the  contradictory  (as  in  the 
moral  view).  Here  we  have  the  aesthetic  reason  at 
work.  The  two  types  of  reasoning  are  inconsistent ; 
it  is  only  their  subtle  shifts  that  keep  us  dazzled 
and  deluded.  (3)  In  a  final  sophistication,  we  have 
the  problem  resolved  on  wholly  (Esthetic  grounds. 
Evil  is  but  disease  of  perspective;  suffering  is  not 
illusory,  but  interesting;  the  essential  nature  of  sin 
is  bad  taste.  All  ills  are  reduced  to  fatigues  of  the 
attention;  or,  if  there  be  anything  that  is  positively 
wrong  with  nature,  it  is  some  damage  to  the  interest 
of  the  spectacle;  and  this,  at  the  worst,  may  be 
healed  by  a  merry  mood. 

It  is  not  easy  to  say  which  should  be  foremost  in 
our  contemplation  of  all  this — wonder  at  the  astute¬ 
ness  or  at  the  helplessness  of  human  reasonings. 
Certainly,  after  the  words  are  spent  the  facts  re¬ 
main,  as  sickening  and  as  stenchful  as  they  were  in 
the  beginning.  We  have  shifted  our  nomenclature 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


193 


somewhat;  but  we  have  altered  our  experience  not 
one  iota.  Pain  and  ugliness  remain  with  us,  no  whit 
more  genial  than  before.  Of  what  use  all  these  de¬ 
tours  of  dialectic  if  they  but  lead  us  again  and  again 
to  drink  at  the  same  black  trough? 

XII 

Is  it  not  time  for  a  reconsideration  of  this  whole 
problem  of  evil  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  frank 
and  honest  humanism,  accepting  the  facts  of  life  at 
their  face  values,  as  we  live  them?  We  will  concede 
that  to  a  being  separated  from  our  way  of  life  by 
transcendental  distances  or  by  transcendental  infini¬ 
tudes  these  facts  may  appear  to  be  other  than  they 
are  to  us, — transcendently  better  or  transcendently 
worse,  and  one  with  as  good  logic  as  the  other;  but 
we  must  contend  that  such  a  valuation  of  the  world 
can  be  no  factor  in  our  own.  We  will  acknowledge, 
too,  that  a  man  may  by  proper  surgery  free  himself 
from  man’s  ordinary  passions  and  sensibilities;  but 
we  must  decline  to  accept  such  conduct  as  a  phi¬ 
losophical  solution.  Rather,  we  will  openly  own  that 
pain  and  ugliness,  sin  and  suffering,  are  as  elemental 
and  inevitable  as  ever  they  appear  to  be;  and  with 
Plutarch  we  will  say  that  “it  is  alike  impossible  for 
the  bad  to  exist  where  God  is  the  cause  of  all,  or  for 
the  good  to  be  where  he  is  the  cause  of  naught.” 
Indeed,  we  may  best  take  Plutarch’s  phrasing — un¬ 
marred  by  subtlety — for  the  plain  statement  of  our 
platform : 

The  harmony  of  the  world  is  likened  by  Heraclitus  to  a  lyre 
or  a  bow,  now  taut,  now  relaxed.  And  Euripides, — 

Nor  Paradise  nor  Hell  lieth  apart; 

But  Good  and  Ill  conjoined  in  the  World 

Do  nurture  Beauty.  .  . 


Humanism 
accepts 
evil  as 
fact 


De  Ise  et 
Osiride,  xlv 


Euripides 


194 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

Sublunar 
World  is 
a  mixture 


Two  types 
of  absolute 


Wherefore  this  most  ancient  opinion,  derived  from  the  givers 
of  laws  and  the  teachers  of  things  sacred,  albeit  the  author¬ 
ship  is  unknown,  hath  been  preserved  in  firm  and  indelible 
faith,  not  alone  through  discourse  and  tradition,  but  in  the 
rites  and  mysteries  of  barbarian  and  Greek ;  Neither  is  the 
Universe  born  of  chance,  to  be  pendent  upon  fortune,  destitute 
alike  of  mind,  of  reason  and  of  governance;  nor  yet  is  there 
one  reason  which  controlleth  all,  guiding  as  with  a  rudder  or 
as  with  reins  securely  held.  Nay,  rather  is  all  confused,  and 
to  the  good  is  joined  the  bad,  nor  ever  doth  Nature  bring  forth 
aught  unsullied :  not  that  there  is  but  one  distributor  who  from 
two  jars,  like  a  keeper  of  liquors,  mingleth  and  dispenseth 
human  affairs;  but  that  from  two  contrary  sources  and  by  two 
adverse  powers,  whereof  the  one  leadeth  to  the  right  and 
straightforwardly,  while  the  other  turneth  aside  and  directeth 
astray, — this  very  World  (or  if  not  the  Universe,  at  least  what 
lieth  below  the  Moon)  is  made  unequal  and  is  impelled  to 
various  and  manifold  motions.  But  if  naught  can  become  with¬ 
out  a  cause,  and  if  ill  cannot  be  a  cause  of  good,  it  followeth 
of  necessity  that  in  Nature  there  must  be,  as  of  good,  so  of 
evil,  a  source  and  a  principle.  And  this  is  the  opinion  approved 
of  many,  and  them  the  wisest. 

This  opinion,  “approved  of  many,”  shall  be  our 
opinion  also.  We  shall  insist  that, — whatever  may 
be  the  appearance  of  our  affairs  from  celestial  alti¬ 
tudes, — at  least  in  that  part  of  the  Universe  which 
“lieth  below  the  Moon,”  and  which  is  our  intimate 
concern,  the  good  and  the  bad  are  confusedly  inter¬ 
mingled.  And  so  saying,  our  purpose  will  be  to  ask 
after  their  bearing  upon  life. 

XIII 

First  of  all,  we  must  clear  the  boards  of  a  subtle 
and  far-ramifying  confusion. 

In  their  efforts  to  escape  the  reality  of  evil,  ideal¬ 
ist  and  materialist,  each  in  his  own  degree,  fall  into 
the  like  error.  Each  seeks  salvation  in  an  absolute 
experience, — an  experience  absolutely  unsullied,  ab¬ 
solutely  perfected,  absolutely  secure.  To  be  sure. 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


195 


there  is  the  widest  possible  divergence  in  the  loci  of 
their  respective  realizations :  expansion  into  the  Ab¬ 
solute  Being  of  the  infinite  and  eternal  is  the  ideal¬ 
ist’s  road  to  salvation;  contraction  into  the  absolute 
irrelevance  of  his  own  atomic  self  is  the  materialist’s. 
Each  finds  a  moment  of  perfected  bliss ;  but  this  mo¬ 
ment  for  the  idealist  is  the  timeless  moment  of  all 
eternity,  whereas  for  the  materialist  it  is  the  alto¬ 
gether  temporal  and  fleeting  instancy  of  the  present; 
perfection  for  the  one  is  forever  secure  siih  specie 
ceternitatis,  for  the  other  carpe  diem  is  the  motto  of 
life.  Nevertheless,  this  divergence  is  only  an  inci¬ 
dent  of  temperament :  the  logic  of  the  two  systems  is 
identical.  Each  proceeds  through  excision  of  that 
flux  of  active  relations  which  the  materialist  scorns 
and  the  Absolute  idealist  thwarts,  transmutes  and 
absorbs ;  each  finds  his  goal  in  a  passive  and  aesthetic 
contemplation;  and  each  is  ensconced  forever  in  an 
Eleatic  solitude. 

That  the  security  of  each  is  a  false  security  will 
appear,  I  think,  on  due  reflection.  It  is  an  idolum 
specus,  a  fancy  bred  of  the  philosopher’s  closet;  it 
is  essentially  a  work  of  art,  and,  like  other  art,  a 
fiction.  The  aesthetic  terminus  is  proof  of  this :  the 
whole  world  appears  beautiful,  and  it  appears  beau¬ 
tiful  wholly  because  ugliness  is  abstracted  from  it. 
Science  and  art  are  two  great  modes  of  universaliz¬ 
ing  life;  but  art  is  the  more  dangerous  to  our  integ¬ 
rity  from  the  fact  that,  although  its  nature  is  to 
neglect  and  reject  certain  phases  of  experience,  none 
the  less  it  yields  us  the  illusion  of  fulfilled  life;  we 
are  always  conscious  that  science  is  schematic,  but  it 
is  the  very  success  of  art  to  hide  its  elisions  and 
conceal  its  schematisms. 


Eternal, 

Atomic 


Science 
and  art 


196 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


A  drama 

tized 

Universe 


Words 
are  titles 


‘‘The  end,”  says  Aristotle,  speaking  of  the  drama, 
“is  the  chief  thing  of  all.”  And  here  we  have  the 
clue  to  the  fallacy  that  underlies  the  dramatized  phi¬ 
losophies.  These  philosophies  demand  of  the  world 
dramatic  unity — “an  action  that  is  complete  and 
whole  and  of  a  certain  magnitude.”  Creation  must 
manifest  a  plot,  having  its  proper  complication  and 
solution;  and  the  solution  must  be  a  terminus.  The 
mind  that  insists  upon  absolute  understanding  must 
content  itself  forever  with  a  retrospective  mode;  for 
looking  forward  to  an  end  that  is  inevitable  is  but 
another  phase  of  retrospection.  The  World  is 
viewed  as  a  finished  deed  before  it  is  appraised,  and 
its  so-called  justifications  are  only  the  cheers  and 
hand-clappings  of  satisfied  and  sated  spectators.  We 
admire  the  spacious  and  multicolored  stage,  the 
gifted  protagonists,  the  articulate  plot, — and  we  pro¬ 
nounce  the  work  of  the  Creator  good. 

I  confess  that  this  procedure  has  an  inconquerable 
charm.  For  one  thing,  it  is  the  veritable  essence  of 
syllogistic  thinking.  If  we  are  to  use  our  minds  at 
all  we  must  develop  ideas ;  and  every  developed  idea, 
every  abstraction,  every  thing,  is  a  dramatization  of 
some  phase  of  our  experience.  Language  is  the  most 
stupendous  of  our  art  works,  and  every  noun  and 
verb  is  the  title  of  a  picture.  When  we  rearrange 
these  pictures  into  gracious  series,  we  classify,  as 
science  classifies,  we  philosophize,  we  poetize,  we 
pronounce  those  judgments  on  life  which  seem  to  us 
the  heart  of  reality  as  well  as  of  literature.  And  we 
forget  that  the  neat  boundaries  we  are  setting  are 
only  the  boundaries  of  our  own  imaginations. 

We  forget  that  (as  Aristotle  says)  ‘tragedy’  is 
only  an  imitation  of  life  and  of  the  living  deed;  and 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


197 


that  life  consists  in  action,  and  is  never  a  mere  qual¬ 
ity.  The  aesthetic  philosophers  find  the  essence  of 
world-beauty  in  a  quality,  in  mere  sensuous  presen¬ 
tation.  Epicurean  materialist  and  Absolute  idealist 
are  alike  sensationalists,  their  point  of  difference 
being  that  the  materialist  finds  his  ultimate  in  the 
momentary  sensations  of  man’s  chaotic  experiences, 
while  the  idealist  is  content  only  with  the  timeless 
sensationalism  of  an  Absolute  Consciousness.  But 
the  one  and  the  other  is  evoking  an  illusion,  an  “imi¬ 
tation,”  not  the  “deed,”  of  life. 

In  a  different  context,  where  he  is  considering 
actual  and  not  artistic  purposes,  Aristotle  comes  to 
the  core  of  humanistic  metaphysics.  “As  teachers 
consider  their  object  achieved  when  they  have  shown 
their  pupils  at  task,  so  it  is  with  Nature.  .  .  For 
the  action  is  the  end”  (to  yap  epyov  reAo?).  Aristotle 
adds,  “the  action  itself  is  the  actuality”  S’eVepycta 
TO  epyov) ;  and  it  is  doubtless  this  conception  which 
dominates  his  notion  that  the  proper  business  of  art 
is  the  imitation  of  human  deeds,  and  that  its  func¬ 
tion  is  to  make  these  deeds  emotionally  (and  hence 
actuatingly)  intelligible. 

I  am  aware  that  intelligibility  means  idealism,  and 
that  the  deed  Aristotle  would  have  us  imitate  in  art 
is  the  pattern  rather  than  the  execution  of  reality.  I 
merely  contend  that  the  idealism  is  wholly  relative  to 
human  understanding  and  desires,  and  that  it  in  no 
wise  excuses  or  explains  away  facts  that  are  unrea¬ 
sonable  and  humanly  objectionable.  It  is  idealism 
because  it  promises  a  cure,  not  as  being  the  state¬ 
ment  of  a  healed  condition. 

The  notion  that  actuality  consists  in  action  may  be 
taken  in  a  Heraclitean  way,  as  expressing  the  irre- 


^sthetic 

philosophies 


Metaphysics 

1050a 


Idealism 

relative 


14 


198 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

strenuous 

life 


Poetics, 

14S0b 


Principle 

of 

identity 


sponsible  flux  and  flow  of  events.  Lucretius  de¬ 
scribes  the  Roman  Jehu,  who,  bored  with  the  ennui 
of  great  mansions,  drives  furiously  to  his  country 
villa,  “as  if  to  bear  aid  to  a  burning  house”;  arrives 
there  but  to  yawn  and  nap,  and  then  rushes  back  to 
the  city.  Here  we  have  the  very  image  of  the  mean- 
inglessly  strenuous  life,  the  life  uncontrolled  by 
ideals  and  therefore  unintelligible. 

But  the  other  extreme,  of  complete  intelligibility, 
can  be  only  achieved  by  a  life  whose  ideals  have  all 
been  realized,  and  which  is,  therefore,  brought  to  an 
end.  “Call  no  man  happy  until  the  manner  of  his 
death  be  known”  is  Solon’s  wise  word:  no  life  can 
be  appraised  until  it  is  over.  Artistic  portrayals  of 
life  do  not  invariably  end  with  the  death  of  the  hero, 
but  they  do  invariably  end  with  the  cessation  of  our 
interest  in  his  career.  To  quote  Aristotle  once 
again:  “An  end  is  that  which  naturally  follows  some 
other  thing,  but  has  nothing  following  itself.”  And 
this  holds  of  meanings  as  well  as  of  events.  Every 
finished  teleology  is  a  tragic  denouement. 

There  is  fascination  in  generalizing  the  course  of 
events  and  justifying  them  by  their  outcomes.  For 
instance,  I  experience  a  thrill  when  I  perceive  the 
great  foundation  of  human  reason  itself, — that  prin¬ 
ciple  of  identity  which  is  the  bony  support  of  all  our 
thinking  and  the  skeleton  framework  of  all  our 
truth — emerging  powerful  and  triumphant  from  the 
mind’s  long  schoolings  in  the  magic  of  similia  simili- 
bus  and  the  quaint  science  of  mythopoetic  fancy. 
And  again  I  feel  a  sense  of  final  vindication  when  I 
perceive — as  seems  to  me  the  fact — that  human 
cruelty  is  a  necessary  step  in  the  development  of 
human  sympathy:  that  without  the  generation  of 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


199 


that  understanding  of  another’s  suffering  which 
makes  cruelty  possible,  the  further  generation  of 
painful  understanding  of  another’s  suffering,  which 
lies  at  the  foundation  of  sympathy  and  sympathetic 
aid,  could  never  have  been.  So  viewing  the  matter, 
I  can  but  feel  that  Nature  has  in  a  measure  justified 
and  atoned  for  her  own  barbarities. 

None  the  less  I  am  perfectly  aware  that  reasonings 
of  this  sort  are  essentially  fallacious.  They  justify 
to  me,  perhaps,  in  my  achieved  insight  Nature’s  in¬ 
flictions  of  suffering;  they  do  not  justify  them  to 
the  sufferers  of  times  past  or  to  come.  In  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  Universe  one  moment  is  no  more 
momentous  than  another  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  spectator, — at  least,  morally;  while  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  participants,  his  own  entry  and 
exit  is  for  each  the  moment  supreme.  ‘Justifications’ 
must  be  as  valid  for  the  Mesozoic  saurians  and  ice- 
age  mammoths  as  for  us  of  today.  Otherwise,  we 
are  forced  inevitably  into  the  casuistical  pitfall  of 
expediency:  “the  end  justifies  the  means.”  And  the 
end,  in  such  case,  is  one  which  is  never,  as  Aristotle 
puts  it,  action  and  life;  but  is  always  mere  quality, 
death  itself. 

Art  (and  I  make  the  term  catholic  of  systemic 
philosophies)  is  the  great  simulacrum  of  life;  it  is 
the  means  whereby  we  gain  partial  perspectives  of 
life’s  partial  intelligibilities.  But  being  partial  it  is 
abstract;  and  being  abstract  it  is  static;  and  hence 
it  is  never  quite  true  to  that  life  which  consists  in 
active  deeds  and  finds  its  actuality  in  effort.  Art 
portrays  the  actual  through  the  ideal;  but  ideals 
themselves  are  vital  agents,  whose  very  potency  de¬ 
pends  upon  their  power  to  grow, — to  eliminate  as 


Cruelty  and 
sympathy 


Nature’s 

justifica¬ 

tions 


The  art  of 
philosophers 


200 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


well  as  to  transmute  and  absorb, — and  growth  per¬ 
mits  of  no  end  other  than  growth.  The  beauty  that 
we  gain  from  absolute  perspectives  can  never  be  the 
adequate  reflection  of  a  growing  and  creative  Na¬ 
ture. 


XIV 


Art 

dangerous 


Beauty 


Universalia 
in  rebus 


Art  is  a  great  and  dangerous  abstraction.  It  is 
great  because  it  comes  closer  to  presenting  to  our 
minds  the  universals  that  form  the  truth  of  reality 
than  does  any  other  mode  of  human  thought.  It  is 
dangerous  because  this  close  similitude  is  ever  per¬ 
suading  us  to  accept  itself  as  the  complete  and  faith¬ 
ful  reproduction  of  reality. 

What  Art  abstracts  from  reality  is  Beauty:  it  is 
the  business  of  Art  to  be  beautiful,  Art  exists  for  the 
sake  of  Beauty,  we  say.  But  just  because  the  beauty 
which  the  artist  gives  us  is  an  abstracted  beauty,  a 
beauty  taken  out  of  its  natural  context  and  pre¬ 
sented  without  its  natural  relations,  just  because  of 
this,  the  Beauty  with  which  Art  enlightens  us  is  a 
falsification  of  natural  Beauty.  It  is  static  and  fic- 
tive  as  are  all  conceptual  universals. 

None  the  less,  if  the  art  be  true  to  Nature’s  in¬ 
spiration,  it  will  be  true  of  Nature’s  actuating  values. 
Art,  we  say,  is  idealization  of  Nature.  But  the 
ideality  was  suggested  in  Nature’s  procedures  before 
it  was  made  perceptible  in  the  art.  In  other  words, 
to  speak  with  the  Medisevalists,  Beauty  as  a  univer¬ 
sal  subsists  in  rebus  metaphysically,  before  it  can  be 
presented  post  rem  in  the  work  of  art. 

What,  then,  is  this  prior  Beauty  of  Nature  ? 

My  reply  is,  ( 1 )  It  is  the  universal  in  re,  in  the 
reality.  It  is  not  the  universal  that  covers  a  multi- 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


201 


tude  of  instances,  but  the  universal  that  defines  char¬ 
acter;  it  is  not  the  general,  but  the  essential.  (2) 
Such  a  universal  is  fundamentally  a  Platonic  Idea 
incarnate ;  it  is  presented  in  actu,  and  its  being  is  the 
actuality.  That  is,  it  is  an  actual,  or  actuating,  ideal, 
— a  living  Form  of  Nature,  expressive  of  Nature’s 
present  intention  and  desire.  To  put  the  matter  oth¬ 
erwise,  it  is  the  idealizing  activity  of  a  given  life- 
moment;  it  is  the  prophetic  cast  of  experience,  the 
quality  which  makes  experience  representable  and 
hence  foreseeable.  (3)  Therefore,  since  for  man  it 
is  relative  to  human  experience  and  possibility,  it  is 
Nature  humanized.  It  is  Nature  conquered  by  hu¬ 
man  imagination  and  vitalized  by  human  aspiration ; 
thus  forming  a  sort  of  mid  realm,  opposed  on  the 
one  hand  to  the  bodiless  and  utilitarian  truth  of  Na¬ 
ture  as  known  to  Science,  and  on  the  other  opposed 
to  the  brutality  and  uselessness  of  that  chaotic  Na¬ 
ture  which  cannot  be  humanly  assimilated.  Beauty 
is  essentially  imaginative  conquest  of  chaotic  ex¬ 
periences,  ever  extending  its  bounds  as  experience 
grows. 

In  thus  defining  the  range  of  Beauty  in  the  world, 
we  have  not  exhausted  the  content  of  reality:  we 
have  not  reduced  the  world  to  a  spectacle  of  unal¬ 
loyed  charm,  as  is  the  custom  of  philosophers.  On 
the  contrary,  we  have  explicitly  recognized  that 
there  is  an  indefinite  field  of  formless  and  unintelli¬ 
gible  experiences  which  irk  and  frustrate  human 
aspiration — experiences  for  which  there  is  but  the 
one  name.  Ugliness.  The  effort  to  escape  this  ugli¬ 
ness  is  the  human  motive — the  motive  toward  intel¬ 
ligibility  and  order  and  creative  freedom.  But  the 
effort  is  never  wholly  successful :  for  the  two-fold 


Platonic 

Nature 


is  Nature 
humanized 


Ugliness 


202 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Man  in 
bond  to 
Chaos 


Beauty 
in  morals 


reason,  that  Beauty  itself  is  dynamic  and  is  made 
manifest  only  in  the  mood  of  aspiration,  and  that 
Nature  is  not  only  greater  than  human  experience 
but  greater  than  human  possibility. 

Man’s  condition  is,  and  must  always  be,  that  of  a 
bondsman  and  a  sufferer.  He  is  in  bond  to  Titanic 
Chaos  and  he  suffers  the  tribulations  of  his  anti¬ 
human  environment.  But  bondsman  though  he  be, 
he  is  free  to  strive  after  freedom,  to  combat  Titanism 
and  rebel  against  brutality,  and  above  all  to  create 
for  himself  situation  after  situation  of  cosmic 
promise.  Man’s  bondage  to  brute  Nature  means 
suffering;  but  the  wistfulness  of  the  bond  moment, 
which  is  the  vision  of  Beauty,  means  the  right  to 
unceasing  endeavor,  and  it  may  mean  immortality, 
too,  if  to  mortal  spirit  be  granted  the  strength  for  so 
mighty  a  combat. 

Beauty  in  Nature  is  thus  intimately  a  matter  of 
conduct.  I  presume  that  this  is  in  large  measure 
responsible  for  the  confusions  of  moral  and  aesthetic 
values  which  have  beclouded  metaphysics.  ‘Moral 
beauty’  is  character ;  but  character  is  only  a  post  rent 
abstraction — an  aesthetic  view  of  a  personality,  satis¬ 
factory  only  after  the  person  is  dead  and  so  finally 
appraisable.  ‘Beautiful  morals,’  on  the  other  hand, 
are  conduct  in  rebus;  and  they  mean  humanizing 
morals.  When  a  line  of  conduct  is  selected,  by  vir¬ 
tue  of  our  representative  and  volitional  powers,  we 
have  a  kind  of  vital  abstraction  from  experience.  As 
an  abstraction,  it  is  a  work  of  Art, — so  that  we  can 
say  that  the  greatest  human  artist  is  he  who  creates 
the  most  beautiful  life.  But  just  because  the  work 
of  Art  is,  in  this  case,  a  life,  and  not  an  imitation  of 
life,  its  character  is  converted  into  reality;  or  perhaps 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


203 


I  can  more  consistently  say,  that  what  we  see  as 
character  is  the  fact  of  the  personality,  the  ideal 
character  embodied.  Here,  and  here  alone,  we  have 
the  case  where  Beauty  in  Nature  and  in  Art  are  one. 

We  have  a  special  name  for  this  kind  of  beauty. 
Nobility;  and  we  regard  it  as  the  highest  beauty. 
And  now,  may  I  ask,  what  is  the  characteristic  con¬ 
dition  under  which  this  highest  beauty  appears  ?  Is 
not  the  answer  immediate, — pain,  suffering?  No¬ 
bility  is  the  manfestation  of  humanhood  under  trial, 
and  the  greater  the  trial  the  greater  may  be  the 
manifest  beauty. 

Tylor  recounts  a  simple  Russian  folk- tale : 

There  sat  a  Russian  under  a  larch-tree,  and  the  sunshine 
glared  like  fire.  He  saw  something  coming  from  afar;  he 
looked  again — it  was  the  Pest-maiden,  huge  of  stature,  all 
shrouded  in  linen,  striding  towards  him.  He  would  have  fled 
in  terror,  but  the  form  grasped  him  with  her  long  outstretched 
hand.  “Knowest  thou  the  Pest?”  she  said;  “I  am  she.  Take 
me  on  thy  shoulders  and  carry  me  through  all  Russia ;  miss  no 
village,  no  town,  for  I  must  visit  all.  But  fear  not  for  thyself, 
thou  shalt  be  safe  amid  the  dying.”  Clinging  with  her  long 
hands,  she  clambered  on  the  peasant’s  back;  he  stepped  onward, 
saw  the  form  above  him  as  he  went,  but  felt  no  burden.  First, 
he  bore  her  to  the  towns;  they  found  there  joyous  dance  and 
song;  but  the  form  waved  her  linen  shroud,  and  joy  and  mirth 
were  gone.  As  the  wretched  man  looked  around,  he  saw 
mournings,  he  heard  the  tolling  of  the  bells,  there  came  funeral 
processions,  the  graves  could  not  hold  the  dead.  He  passed 
on,  and  coming  near  each  village  heard  the  shriek  of  the  dying, 
saw  all  faces  white  in  the  desolate  houses.  But  high  on  the 
hill  stands  his  own  hamlet:  his  wife,  his  little  children  are 
there,  and  the  aged  parents,  and  his  heart  bleeds  as  he  draws 
near.  With  strong  gripe  he  holds  the  maiden  fast,  and  plunges 
with  her  beneath  the  waves.  He  sank:  she  rose  again,  but  she 
quailed  before  a  heart  so  fearless,  and  fled  away  to  the  forest 
and  the  mountain. 


Nobility 


A  Russian 
Tale 


Here  is  the  case  of  nobility  in  one’s  intimate  and 


204 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Creative 

aesthetic 


James 
on  the 
Moral 
Equivalent 
of  War 


individual  concerns.  Because  it  is  viewed  as  an 
affair  of  individual  conscience,  we  call  it  a  virtue — 
the  virtue  of  self-sacrifice.  But  transfer  the  nobility 
from  the  individual  to  the  social  context,  view  it 
in  the  historic  mode,  and  immediately  its  aesthetic 
character  becomes  obvious  and  dominant.  The  fun¬ 
damental  interest  of  history  is  an  aesthetic  interest, 
and  its  impression  an  aesthetic  impression.  It  does 
not,  however,  present  us  with  an  aesthetic  absolute 
(be  it  momentary  or  timelessly  eternal) ;  on  the  con¬ 
trary,  the  historical  aesthetic  is  essentially  an  active, 
idealizing,  creative  aesthetic :  it  shows  us  the  human 
conquest  of  Nature  in  process,  with  all  the  thrill 
of  present  and  undecided  battle. 

In  one  of  his  last  addresses,  William  James, 
with  his  usual  sure  insight,  comes  directly  to  the 
point : 

Patriotism  no  one  thinks  discreditable ;  nor  does  any  one 
deny  that  war  is  the  romance  of  history.  But  inordinate  am¬ 
bitions  are  the  soul  of  every  patriotism,  and  the  possibility  of 
violent  death  the  soul  of  all  romance.  The  militarily  patriotic 
and  romantic-minded  everywhere,  and  especially  the  profes¬ 
sional  military  class,  refuse  to  admit  for  a  moment  that  war 
may  be  a  transitory  phenomenon  in  social  evolution.  The 
notion  of  a  sheep’s  paradise  like  that  revolts,  they  say,  our 
higher  imagination.  Where  then  would  be  the  steeps  of  life? 
If  war  had  ever  stopped,  we  should  have  to  re-invent  it,  on 
this  view,  to  redeem  life  from  flat  degeneration.  Reflective 
apologists  for  war  at  the  present  day  all  take  it  religiously.  It 
is  a  sort  of  sacrament.  Its  profits  are  to  the  vanquished  as 
well  as  the  victor;  and  quite  apart  from  any  question  of  profit, 
it  is  an  absolute  good,  we  are  told,  for  it  is  human  nature  at 
its  highest  dynamic.  Its  “horrors”  are  a  cheap  price  to  pay 
for  rescue  from  the  only  alternative  supposed,  of  a  world  of 
clerks  and  teachers,  of  co-education  and  zoophily,  of  “con¬ 
sumers’  leagues”  and  “associated  charities,”  of  industrialism 
unlimited  and  feminism  unabashed.  No  scorn,  no  hardness,  no 
valor  any  more !  Fie  upon  such  a  cattleyard  of  a  planet  1 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


205 


And  when  we  review  our  human  past,  do  we  not 
perceive  in  fact  that  it  is  the  pomp  and  magnificence 
of  civilizations,  aye,  even  their  spectacular  cruelties, 
that  have  created  their  lasting  impressiveness?  We 
are  indifferent  to  the  captives  that  died  under  the 
lash  when  we  behold  the  grandeur  of  the  Pyramids ; 
we  forget  that  Assyria  is  the  synonym  of  cruelty 
when  we  remember  mighty  Nineveh;  of  what 
moment  to  us  is  the  bondage  of  Athens’  hundred 
thousand  slaves  if  it  be  the  price  of  Hellenic  glory? 
Nay,  the  Roman  arena  itself, — has  it  not  given  us 
the  transfigurations  of  martyrdom?  Perchance,  we 
even  respond  with  a  faint  thrill  to  its  red  delirium, 
forgiving  its  inhumanity  to  the  madness  of  the  spec¬ 
tacle,  as  we  forgive  the  unnatural  sin  of  the  Renais¬ 
sance  Popes  to  the  sensuous  beauty  which  was  its 
offspring. 

In  retrospect,  we  perceive  clearly  the  emergence 
of  aesthetic  values  and  the  relative  indifference  of 
moral  values.  But  the  retrospective  mode,  as  I  have 
said,  is  philosophically  a  dangerous  and  a  falsifying 
mode  of  thought.  We  incline  to  accept  it  as  defini¬ 
tive;  and  it  always  defines  what  is  finished  and 
dead;  not  what  is  vital  and  growing.  A  proper 
philosophy  of  life  must  be  based  upon  some  living 
and  operating  element,  such  as  present  idealization; 
and  this  is  directly  interbound  with  present  pain. 

In  a  further  paragraph  of  the  paper  from  which 
I  have  just  quoted,  James  offers  us  his  substitute 
for  war: 

There  is  nothing  to  make  one  indignant  in  the  mere  fact  that 
life  is  hard,  that  men  should  toil  and  suffer  pain.  The 
planetary  conditions  once  for  all  are  such,  and  we  can  stand 
it.  But  that  so  many  men,  by  mere  accidents  of  birth  and 


Human 
felicity 
is  not  the 
measure 
of  historic 
values 


James’ 

substitute 


206 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


opportunity,  should  have  a  life  of  nothing  else  but  toil  and  pain 
and  hardness  and  inferiority  imposed  upon  them,  should  have 
no  vacation,  while  others  natively  no  more  deserving  never 
get  any  taste  of  this  campaigning  life  at  all, — this  is  capable 
of  arousing  indignation  in  reflective  minds.  It  may  end  by 
War  upon  seeming  shameful  to  all  of  us  that  some  of  us  have  nothing 

Nature  but  campaigning,  and  others  nothing  but  unmanly  ease.  If 

now — and  this  is  my  idea — there  were,  instead  of  military  con¬ 
scription  a  conscription  of  the  whole  youthful  population  to 
form  for  a  certain  number  of  years  a  part  of  the  army  enlisted 
against  Nature,  the  injustice  would  tend  to  be  evened  out,  and 
numerous  other  goods  to  the  commonwealth  would  follow.  The 
military  ideals  of  hardihood  and  discipline  would  be  wrought 
into  the  growing  fibre  of  the  people;  no  one  would  remain 
blind  as  the  luxurious  classes  now  are  blind,  to  man’s  real 
relations  to  the  globe  he  lives  on,  and  to  the  permanently  sour 
and  hard  foundations  of  his  higher  life. 

The  honeyed  bliss  of  an  unalloyed  Paradise,  be  it 
temporal  or  eternal,  is  intolerable  to  a  stalwart 
and  sagacious  humanism.  It  is  James’  moral  nature 
that  recoils  against  man-made  war  upon  man ; 
it  is  internecine  and  inhuman.  But  his  philosophical 
nature  equally  recoils  against  the  cheek-by-jowl 
sentimentality  of  a  Universe  that  is  peopled  only 
by  affinities.  Rather  he  recognizes:  (1)  That  the 
foundations  of  humanism  are  elementally  and  per¬ 
manently  sour  and  hard  foundations,  and  that  the 
life  which  is  worthy  of  respect  must  be  a  life  of 

Moral  conflict  with  what  is  harsh  and  painful  and  in- 

i*ch1i1ics 

human;  and  (2)  that  man’s  position  with  respect  to 
Nature  is  essentially  one  of  warfare, — without  tem¬ 
porary  armistice,  with  no  prospect  of  Absolute 
Peace. 

There  is  here  no  Utopian  faith  in  an  ultimate 
Quiescence  of  creative  endeavor;  and  there  is  here 
no  cowardly  surrender  to  present  bondage.  Rather 
we  are  sounded  to  a  battle  more  conclusive  than 


t  BEAUTY  AND  PAIN  207 

‘  Armageddon  and  more  grandly  awful  than  Rag- 
,  narok:  it  is  the  battle  of  Man  against  Nature,  the 
Powers  of  Light  against  the  Powers  of  Darkness; 
and  it  must  endure  as  long  as  Darkness  and  Light 
endure;  and  the  essence  of  it  is  life  and  action;  and 
its  aim  and  purpose  is  the  glory  of  the  conflict: 

I'J  \  \  V  /\  vv 

j  TO  yap  epyov  rf  o  evepyeia  to  epyov. 

I  -  XV 

1 

And  now  I  am  in  a  position  to  state,  as  I  hope, 

!  clearly,  the  conception  of  Beauty  which  it  has  been 
I  purpose  to  present. 

,  '  As  I  understand  it.  Beauty  is  a  special  type  of 
experience,  a  phase  of  life.  It  is  by  no  means  the 
i  ;  whole  of  life,  and  no  perspective  is  attainable,  be 
it  microcosmic  or  macrocosmic,  which  can  perceive 
.  naught  but  beauty  in  life  and  still  be  true  to  life, 
i  •  Pain  and  sin,  suffering  and  ugliness,  are  just  as 
real  as  their  opposites,  and  they  are  altogether  as 
i:  intolerable  as  they  seem  to  be.  Further,  they  are 

unescapable  so  long  as  life  continues,  whether  in 
this  world  or  in  a  world  to  come:  the  honey  of 
I  Paradise  is  but  the  embalmment  of  the  spiritually 
dead. 

This  means  that  in  Nature  there  is  no  perfect 
Beauty,  and  this  from  the  very  fact  that  Nature  is 
alive.  For  life  itself  is  action,  change,  conflict, — 
perpetual  assimilation  and  elimination,  conquest 
and  destruction;  and  the  elements  that  are  at  war, 
as  we  men  know  them,  are  respectively  the  humane 
and  the  barbarous  elements,  the  Good  and  the  Bad, 
the  Beautiful  and  the  Ugly.  Of  these,  the  Good 
and  the  Beautiful  represent  the  standard  under 
which  we  fight,  or  the  state  for  which  we  fight;  they 


Light  and 
Darkness 


Beauty- 


Nature 

twofold 


208 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Vision 
of  per¬ 
fection 


Beauty  is 
Divinity 
in  rebus 


represent  that  part  of  Nature  and  of  life  which  is 
made  intelligible  to  us,  which  is  Hellenized,  hu¬ 
manized.  Over  against  this  realm  lies  the  brutish 
and  meaningless  realm  of  evil  and  monstrosity. 

But  from  the  very  fact  that  life  is  action,  and 
all  its  elements  working  elements,  follows  the  two¬ 
fold  character  of  Beauty,  as  aesthetic  fact  and  as 
moral  inspiration.  In  the  first  of  these  characters 
it  is  the  metaphysical  description  of  humanized 
reality,  of  man’s  imaginative  conquests  conceived  as 
a  domain.  In  the  second  character  it  is  the  Supreme 
Good.  But  in  neither  character  is  it  a  perfected 
thing,  but  only  a  coming  into  perfection;  or  perhaps 
one  had  better  say,  since  the  perfection  is  never  to 
be  achieved  so  long  as  life  is,  it  is  the  immortal 
•vision  of  perfection. 

That  this  vision  is  granted  to  a  bond  and  mortal 
being,  that  it  is,  in  fact,  the  sanity  of  mortal  life 
and  the  actuality  of  human  life,  this,  to  my  mind, 
is  the  one  valid  ground  for  belief  that  Beauty  does 
exist  independently  of  man  in  the  being  of  Nature 
herself, — not  as  Nature’s  exclusive  being,  but  cer¬ 
tainly  to  us  as  her  essential  being.  Beauty  is  the 
Divinity  in  rebus,  as  her  image  in  the  mind  of  man 
is  his  post  rem  revelation  of  Divinity. 

If  I  name  Beauty  the  Divine,  I  am  but  following 
Plato :  ‘'But  of  Beauty,  I  repeat  again  that  we 
saw  her  there  shining  in  company  with  the  celes¬ 
tial  forms ;  and  coming  to  earth  we  find  her  here, 
toe.  .  And  I  believe  that  my  conception  of 
her  nature  is  not  far  from  Plato’s.  For  he  saw 
Beauty  as  the  Ideal  which  is  at  once  the  end  of 
aspiration  and  the  source  of  inspiration  to  us  who 
are  given  in  bond  to  material  pain  and  imperfection. 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


209 


He  saw  Beauty  as  at  once  the  pattern  of  ideality 
and  the  essence  of  actuality,  operating  eternally  for 
the  salvation  of  a  world  eternally  in  need  of  salva¬ 
tion.  Plato  was  no  monistic  denier  of  evil :  rather 
he  said  that  what  counts  in  the  world  is  Goodness 
and  Beauty,  and  that  Beauty  is  the  proper  and  in¬ 
separable  form  of  Goodness;  Beauty  is  the  counte¬ 
nance  of  the  Noble  and  the  Divine. 

It  was  the  vivid  recognition  of  evil  and  ugliness 
that  brought,  in  a  later  and  darker  age,  Plotinus’ 
clearer  expression  of  that  factor  of  pain  and  suffer¬ 
ing  which  enters  into  every  profound  experience  of 
Beauty.  For  love  of  beauty,  says  Plotinus,  being 
at  once  a  reminiscence  and  an  aspiration — a  rem¬ 
iniscence  of  charm  that  can  recur  but  can  never 
be  retained,  an  aspiration  after  glories  that  can  be 
momentarily  glimpsed  but  never  achieved, — love  of 
beauty  is  therefore  both  joy  and  suffering,  self¬ 
exaltation  and  self-immolation.  In  the  words  of  a 
later  and  nobler  Platonist  it  is  “the  unknown  God 
of  unachieved  desire.” 

And  this  word  from  Giordano  Bruno  brings  us 
once  more  to  the  last  and  finest  manifestation  of 
Beauty — in  Nobility  of  character.  Here,  if  ever, 
the  ideal  is  made  real  in  human  experience,  and  as 
the  jewel  emerges  from  its  matrix,  the  butterfly 
from  its  chrysalis,  beautiful  nature  breaks  free  from 
brute  nature.  Here,  if  ever,  we  find  life  “at  its 
highest  dynamic.” 

The  long  ritual  of  human  heroes  and  saints  and 
sages, — do  we  not  therein  define  the  highest  worth 
and  the  highest  truth  of  life?  Achilles,  ^neas, 
Beowulf,  Roland,  Arthur  .  .  .  Socrates,  Boe¬ 
thius,  Bruno,  Spinoza  .  .  .  Saint  Stephen,  Saint 


Plato 


Plotinus 


Giordano 

Bruno 


Heroes 


210 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Saints 


Descartes’ 

ontological 

argument 


Polycarp,  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi,  Saint  Catherine 
of  Siena,  Pere  Damien  de  Veuster  .  .  .  Sanctus 
Petrus,  Sanctus  Paulus,  Sanctus  Johannus,  Sancta 
Maria.  .  .  Do  we  not  herein  set  our  final  valua¬ 
tion  on  the  world,  proclaiming  that  the  beauty  of 
the  life  which  is  kingly  mid  suffering  is  at  once  the 
crown  and  the  cross  of  creation? 

What,  then,  of  the  Providence  in  which  these 
lives  trusted? 

The  man  in  Kansas  held  that  the  impuissance  of 
Providence  proves  that  “gods  and  souls  do  not 
exist.”  So  long  as  we  regard  God  as  the  sort  of 
being  which  the  Absolute  Idealists  make  of  Him, 
I  think  that  the  Kansas  man’s  inference  is  just. 
But  defining  Divinity  as  I  have  defined  it,  as  the 
incarnation  of  a  contending  but  not  all-conquering 
Beauty  and  Righteousness  in  the  midst  of  a  Nature 
which  is  never  wholly  beautiful  nor  wholly  right¬ 
eous,  defining  it  as  that  Cosmic  Life  whose  creative 
being  is  conditioned  by  its  enveloping  Chaos,  so 
defining  Divinity  there  is  not  only  no  irrationality, 
but  there  is  positive  necessity  for  human  faith  in  it. 

The  necessity  is  the  necessity  of  experience  as  we 
know  it,  having  that  degree  of  humanistic  integrity 
which  we  find  in  reason  and  image  in  art.  There 
is  to  my  mind  validity  in  Descartes’  cogito  ergo 
sum,  and  also  in  the  ontological  argument.  The 
truth  and  beauty  which  men  perceive  is  genuine, 
even  if  relative;  it  holds  good  for  our  part  of 
Nature  at  all  events.  I  think  that  it  is  absurd  to 
maintain  that  our  part  is  the  whole,  even  in  form; 
but  I  do  not  therefore  question  its  validity  as  a 
part.  Rather  I  believe  that  human  insight  is  the 
one  stronghold  of  faith  in  a  more  than  human 
Beauty. 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


211 


But  it  is  a  faith,  and  not  in  any  logical  sense  a  cer¬ 
tainty.  It  is  a  faith  in  a  human  center,  a  human 
eddy,  if  I  may  so  figure  it,  in  the  enveloping  chaos. 
It  is  a  faith  which  may  best  be  described  in  Kantian 
terms  as  the  a  priori  form  of  all  our  understand¬ 
ing.  Our  reason  is  founded  in  this  faith;  take  it 
away  and  with  it  disappears  the  consecutiveness 
and  rationality  of  all  experience.  We  are  left  in 
the  flux  of  rhapsodical  sensations,  clinging  to  the 
filmy  illusions  of  mental  cobwebs. 

The  fact  of  living  does  not  permit  us  to  accept 
such  illusoriness  as  possible;  the  mere  fact  of  con¬ 
tinuing  life  compels  our  faith  in  a  reason  which  is 
more  comprehensive  than  man’s  reason,  as  history 
is  more  comprehensive  than  an  individual  life.  Such 
an  inclusive  reason  could  only  be  a  Divine  reason — 
a  Divine  mind  of  which  man’s  is  the  image;  and 
this,  I  believe,  is  the  essential  validity  of  the  onto¬ 
logical  argument. 

And  now  as  to  immortal  souls. 

Human  science  and  reason  are  grounded  in  the 
faith  that  the  images  they  present  are  true  images 
of  intelligible  Nature.  But  the  images  themselves, 
at  their  truest,  constitute  that  outward  reflection  and 
inward  impulse  which  we  have  defined  Beauty  to 
be.  And  Beauty,  at  its  highest,  is  that  incarnate 
character  which  we  instance  in  noble  human  lives. 
Character,  then,  as  embodied  in  the  living  per¬ 
sonality,  is  the  supreme  manifestation  of  that  rea¬ 
sonableness  in  Nature  in  which  we  are  bound  to 
believe,  if  we  are  to  live;  and  in  which  we  are 
bound  to  live,  if  it  be  true. 

Is  such  character  the  transitory  creation  of  brief 
mortal  years?  Yes,  if  Chaos  be  the  conquering 


Faith  an 
a  priori 
form 


Immortal 

souls 


212 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


power;  no,  if  truth  be  lastingly  true.  And  in  Beauty 
itself,  the  being  of  which  is  a  kind  of  realization 
in  promise,  a  prophecy  of  life  never  fulfilled,  we 
have  the  presentiment  of  that  perpetuity  of  aspira¬ 
tion  in  which  our  reason  is  the  embodied  faith. 


XVI 


Plato’s 

mystic 

wisdom 


Love  is 
the  love 
of  Beauty 


There  are  utterances  of  Plato  that  affect  me  un¬ 
cannily,  as  somehow  more  than  human  in  their 
subtle  penetration.  And  no  dialogue  is  more 
permeated  with  the  spirit  of  this  oracular  wisdom 
than  is  the  Symposium.  True,  this  dialogue  is  no 
display  of  dialectical  power  or  of  that  grand  Wis¬ 
dom  of  the  Reason  which  comes  to  expression  in 
Plato’s  period  of  clarified  thought.  Rather,  it  stands 
for  a  Mystic  Wisdom — the  enigmatic  lore  of 
Chthonian  powers  spoken  by  the  pained  and  con¬ 
fused  tongue  of  some  Pythoness,  half  inspired, 
half  tortured.  It  is  a  wisdom  that  issues  from  the 
sphere  of  instinct  rather  than  from  that  of  reason — 
the  dark  puzzling  Wisdom  of  the  Earth,  not  at  all 
the  shining  revelation  of  the  Heavenly  Ideas. 

It  is  this  instinctive  level,  with  its  mingling  of 
impulsive  certitude  and  evasive  inspiration,  that 
makes  this  wisdom  seem  at  once  the  most  intimate 
and  human  and  the  most  incontrovertible  of  Plato’s 
sayings,  forthshadowing,  as  it  seems  to  me,  the 
one  philosophy  of  life  which  has  beset  men’s  minds, 
since  men  were  mind-gifted,  with  the  sense  of  a 
desperate  but  secure  salvation.  “Love  of  the  Beau¬ 
tiful  set  in  order  the  empire  of  the  Gods.”  Love 
is  the  beginning  of  law  and  order,  both  natural 
and  supernatural;  love  is  the  source  of  all  that  is 
humanly  friendly  in  the  world,  of  all,  therefore, 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


213 


that  men  name  divine.  “First  Chaos  was,  and  then 
broad-bosomed  Earth,  and  after  Love.”  And  this 
creative  Love  is  love  of  the  Beautiful,  This  is  what 
Plato  adds  to  the  mythic  truth  that  was  ancient 
even  with  Hesiod.  Love  is  the  love  of  beauty,  and 
“of  generation  and  birth  in  Beauty.”  Love  is  love 
of  Beauty,  and  it  seeks  Beauty,  as  Love  must  ever 
seek;  and  it  generates  Beauty  and  brings  the  Beau¬ 
tiful  to  birth.  But  because,  as  Plato  elsewhere  says, 
“it  is  by  Beauty  that  all  beautiful  things  become 
beautiful,”  because  Beauty  herself  must  ever  re¬ 
main  a  far  and  beatific  vision,  revealing  herself  but 
partially  and  inconclusively  in  the  world  of  life  and 
generation,  because  of  this.  Love,  which  is  love  of 
Beauty,  is  love  of  an  Ideal  which  can  never  be  per¬ 
fectly  realized,  but  must  ever  remain  the  pattern 
of  aspiration  for  men  and  for  gods.  “Wherefore,” 
he  says,  “love  is  of  immortality.” 

Is  not  this  the  core  of  humanism,  and  of  truth? 

And  is  it  not — verily,  is  it  not  also  the  essence 
of  all  those  adumbrate  philosophies  (myths,  we  call 
them)  which  have  been  and  are  the  uplifted  sym¬ 
bols  of  man’s  redemption  from  brutality  and  chaotic 
destruction  ? 

With  the  ancientest  of  civilizations  this  myth 
emerges.  Forms  huge  and  monstrous,  like  material 
exhalations  of  a  tropic  earth,  are  these  old  Egyptian 
deities,  seeming  to  us  more  like  the  Jinn  of  Saracen 
necromancers — dead  gods  revealed  to  seers  of  the 
dead — than  like  vital  embodiments  of  human  imag¬ 
ination.  Yet  what  gods  have  ruled  longer  on  this 
Earth  than  Isis  and  her  lord  Osiris?  Seb  and  Nut, 
Earth  and  Sky,  were  their  parents,  and  monstrous 
Typhon  was  their  half-brother.  On  the  day  that 


Wherefore, 
love  is  of 
immortality 


Egyptian 

mysteries 


15 


214 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


De  Ise 
et  Osiride 


Plutarch’s 

view 


Osiris  was  born  a  loud  voice  proclaimed  the  birth 
of  a  King  of  Men;  and  in  his  incarnate  life  he 
drew  men,  says  Plutarch,  from  a  beggarly  and 
bestial  way  of  living,  teaching  them  the  use  of 
grain  and  the  meaning  of  law;  by  poetry  and  music 
and  sweet  persuasion  he  won  them  to  the  finer  life, 
nor  had  he  any  need  of  arms  to  establish  his  power. 
But  Typhon,  his  half-brother,  hated  him  because  he 
was  good;  and  Typhon  lured  him  to  his  death,  and 
dismembered  and  scattered  his  body, — which  the 
weeping  Isis  gathered  together  and  placed  in  the 
tomb.  But  Osiris  became  Lord  of  Life  in  the  world 
to  come. 

We  may  accept,  if  we  choose,  Plutarch’s  interpre¬ 
tation  of  the  myth:  Whatever  is  orderly  and  rea¬ 
sonable  and  bright  and  good  in  the  human  soul, 
this,  he  says,  is  Osiris.  And  whatever  in  the  earth 
and  in  the  winds  and  in  the  waters  and  in  the 
heavens  and  the  stars  is  seasonable  and  due  and 
orderly,  this,  too,  is  the  image  and  embodiment  of 
Osiris.  But  whatso  is  passionate  and  irrational  and 
brutal,  whatso  is  morbid  and  violent  and  devastat¬ 
ing,  in  mind  and  in  nature,  this  is  Typhon.  We 
may  follow  Plutarch,  too,  in  his  hopeful  conviction 
that  however  contrary  be  the  powers  that  make  the 
world  their  battlefield,  yet  the  better  is  the  stronger 
power,  and  the  better  must  prevail.  We  may  follow 
in  this  because  without  hope  and  trust  in  the  better 
power  mankind  cannot  endure.  If  we  be  answered, 
we  of  today,  with  the  scientific  foreknowledge  of 
the  doom  of  life  on  this,  our  earthly  planet,  yet 
shall  we  answer  back  with  the  Egyptian  that  the 
world  of  our  immortal  hope  is  the  world  of  a 
life  beyond  the  grave  where  rules  the  resurrected 


BEAUTY  AND  PAIN 


215 


God.  And  of  our  dead  we  shall  say,  as  said  the 
Egyptian :  ‘‘As  surely  as  Osiris  liveth,  so  shall  he 
live  also;  as  surely  as  Osiris  did  not  die,  so  shall 
he  not  die;  as  surely  as  Osiris  is  not  annihilated, 
so  shall  he  too  be  not  annihilated.” 

Osiris  was  a  Savior  of  Men.  He  was  the  embodi¬ 
ment,  in  this  life,  of  the  blessings  of  culture  and 
reason;  and  he  was  the  hope  of  a  life  to  come. 
Like  all  Saviors  he  died  a  suffering  and  sacrificial 
death,  offered  up  in  atonement  for  a  Cosmic  sin; 
and  like  all  Saviors  he  typified  the  descent  of  a 
Heavenly  Illumination  into  a  world  darkened  by 
an  overshadowing  and  monster-infested  Chaos. 

is  in  the  New  World:  Quetzal- 
coatl  has  been  sent  from  the  mansions  of  the  Sun 
to  bear  to  men  the  blessings  of  law  and  order  and 
peace  and  the  arts  of  civilization.  But  the  chaotic 
powers  of  evil  hate  him,  and  contend  with  him,  and 
afflict  him, — till  he  sheds  such  tears  that  they  pene¬ 
trate  the  very  stones  of  the  earth.  And  he  is  driven 
forth  from  his  Kingdom,  to  far-away  Tlapallan. 
Yet,  said  the  Aztecs,  he  will  return  again  in  glory, 
bringing  salvation. 

And  in  Mithras  did  not  the  unconquered  Sun 
himself — first-born  of  Heaven — descend  unto  a 
suffering  atonement  that  men  might  immortally  be 
saved?  The  Powers  of  Evil  prevailed, — but  only 
because  their  vision  was  brief  and  blinded :  in  the 
ages  to  come,  the  ages  they  could  not  read,  he  who 
so  suffered  for  men  was  to  save  them  through  the 
very  intensity  of  his  passion. 

And  Prometheus,  stark-stretched  upon  the  grim 
sea-beaten  crag,  suffering  an  age-told  agony,  be¬ 
cause  he  loved  men  overmuch !  .  .  .  .  Great  Olym- 


The  same  myth 


Book  of 
the  Dead 


Quetzal- 

coatl 


Mithras 


Prometheus 


216 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Man 
Sorrows 


pus  shook  with  the  laughter  of  the  Gods,  while 
the  gaunt  Titan  with  Titanic  suffering  expiated  the 
crimes  of  Chaos  and  purchased  with  his  blood  for 
mortal  men  an  immortal  Beauty. 

Race  after  race,  religion  after  religion,  men  have 
uplifted  to  human  imagination  the  great  symbol  of 
a  Love  that  can  Sacrifice  for  a  Beauty  that  can 
Redeem.  And  the  image  of  a  Man  of  Sorrows 
has  become  the  image  of  that  Divinity  in  Nature 
of  which  human  nobility  is  the  only  figure  and  in 
which  man’s  life  is  his  utter  confession  of  faith. 
And  if  in  this  faith  men  have  found  a  faith  in  a 
life  eternal,  that  is  only  because  our  mortal  mood 
compels  this :  for  love  is  the  love  of  Beauty,  and 
Beauty  is  the  ideal  and  pattern  of  Life  itself. 
“Wherefore  love  is  of  immortality.” 


EPILOGUE:  WRATH  AND  RUTH 


The  Great  War  has  been  fought.  The  dead, 
brave  and  poltroon,  innocent  and  criminal, 
lie  in  their  graves.  The  maimed,  the  broken, 
and  the  bereaved,  with  such  resignation  as  they 
can  command,  live  on,  facing  the  gray  decline  of 
unillumined  years.  And  the  great  mass  of  man¬ 
kind,  beholding  the  fullness  of  their  human  deed, 
are  brought  face  to  face  with  their  own  reflec¬ 
tion,  judged  of  themselves. 

What  philosopher,  in  the  fall  of  1918,  could 
write  of  human  nature  and  achievement  as  he 
would  have  written  in  the  spring  of  1914?  What 
prophet  can  now  prophesy  as  he  would  then  have 
prophesied?  Or  what  nation,  of  all  earth’s  na¬ 
tions,  can  now  cling  to  the  purposes  and  politics 
which  it  pursued  in  that  day,  briefly  past  in 
time,  but  in  thought  remote  and  buried?  The 
world  has  changed  since  1914;  the  Titanism  in 
human  nature  which  we  who  call  ourselves  the 
civilized  had  deemed  to  lie  deeper  than  Orcus 
has  made  the  lands  to  tremble  and  has  lighted 
cities  with  lurid  flame;  fanes  are  shattered  and 
the  old  images  are  overthrown. 

Looked  at  from  the  vantage  of  our  grim  ex¬ 
perience  the  ideals  of  1914  seem  shot  through 
with  the  bizarre,  the  puerile,  the  presumptuous. 
Then  we  believed,  with  all  our  ostensible  souls, 
in  human  self-sufficiency;  we  believed  in  hard 
reason  and  practical  realities,  in  the  panacean 

217 


The  Great 
War 


Titanism 
in  human 
nature 


218 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Conceit  of 

human 

self- 

sufficiency 


Man-made 

war 


powers  of  science  and  in  the  substantial  good  of 
properties  acquired;  we  believed,  gaily,  in- 
flatedly,  in  our  superiority  over  all  that  was  hu¬ 
manly  past  and  in  our  ability  to  insure  progress 
through  the  future;  most  of  all,  we  believed  in 
the  importance  of  looking  out  for  “Number  One” 
— whether  Number  One  were  a  man  or  a  nation 
— and  we  trusted  unblushingly  in  the  white 
man’s  capacity  to  calculate  and  get  the  Good. 
Even  our  altruism — and  surely  it  was  the  most 
amazing  of  our  egoisms— was  unabashed:  the 
world  was  populous  with  reformers  who  called 
themselves  servants,  and  proposed  to  be  tyrants, 
with  no  other  credential  than  the  approbation  of 
their  own  bland  consciences.  The  whole  attitude 
was  taken  as  of  course,  and  regarded  as  common 
sense,  and  lived  in  as  finality;  and  man’s  prime 
virtue  was  held  to  be  that  he  was  self-made. 

Then  this  self-made  man  produced  his  man¬ 
made  war.  There  is  a  satisfaction  of  the  kind 
we  call  grim  to  be  derived  from  the  clear  fact 
that  war  is  man-made;  we  shoulder  the  respon¬ 
sibility  for  the  majority  of  our  afflictions  upon  im¬ 
personal  nature,  but  this  we  must  accept;  and 
accepting  it,  see  in  it  plain  truths  of  our  own 
nature.  Bitter  as  it  is,  the  war  is  none  the  less 
a  needed  medicine;  we  had  lived  in  a  world  of 
self-illusion,  and  worse,  of  ignoble  self-illusion; 
the  war  has  shattered  this,  pricked  our  bubble 
of  conceit,  and  has  shown  us,  not  Man  as  he  is, 
which  God  alone  can  know,  but  the  civilized 
twentieth  century  man  of  Europe  and  America, 
blown  with  pride,  as  both  worse  and  better  than 
he  had  dreamed. 


WRATH  AND  RUTH 


219 


Aye,  better  as  well  as  worse.  All-seeing 
heaven  alone  knows  what  arrogance,  avarice, 
lust,  cruelty,  diabolism,  what  storms  of  spite  and 
flames  of  murderous  hate,  man  has  been  shown 
capable  of  in  this  war.  But  there  are  other  pic¬ 
tures,  beautiful  even  in  the  midst  of  terror: 
heroism,  devotion,  righteous  wrath,  gentleness, 
martyrdom,  like  pure  transfigurations  of  dross 
souls,  which,  even  more  than  the  first,  give  the 
lie  to  the  idols  we  had  erected. 

Among  philosophers  the  rashest  of  these 
idolatries  was  surely  that  of  human  reason:  we 
plumed  ourselves  upon  our  rationalities,  our 
science;  we  styled  our  time  an  Age  of  Reason, 
an  Enlightenment;  we  paraded  our  sense  of  real¬ 
ity  and  proclaimed  the  sufficiency  of  the  intellect 
in  the  guidance  of  human  affairs.  And  reason, 
deliberate  and  calculating,  precipitated  this  war; 
and  reason,  cool  and  hard-headed,  scarred  its  his¬ 
tory  with  atrocity;  and  reason — in  what  name 
but  in  that  of  reality? — pandered  to  every  base¬ 
ness  of  material  appetite.  In  such  sense  is  rea¬ 
son  our  guide! 

But  again,  we  philosophers,  with  what  little 
disguise  we  proclaimed  the  biological  primacy, 
in  human  nature,  of  the  passion  for  self-indul¬ 
gence.  We  called  it  utilitarian  happiness;  we 
chattered  about  fitness  and  self-preservation;  but 
we  meant  to  say  that  the  sole  key  to  human 
conduct  is  selfish  hedonism.  And  now  the  spec¬ 
tacle  of  the  war  has  shown  us  whole  peoples, 
swayed  by  untaught  pity,  led  to  the  surrender  of 
their  comfort,  and  thousands  and  repeated  thou¬ 
sands  of  earth’s  common  men  making  a  glad 


Idols  of 
philosophers 


Reason 


Self; 

seeking 


220 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Sense  of 
justice 


Mingled 

motives 


War’s 

apocalypse 


sacrifice  of  their  lives  for  the  good  of  other  men 
and  for  the  salvation  of  their  ideals  of  right.  Far 
from  being  first  and  fundamental,  self-seeking  is 
rather  a  weak  and  pacificist  human  sentiment : 
the  springs  of  great  action  move  elsewhere. 

Here,  too,  philosophers  have  been  self-de¬ 
ceived;  and  in  a  third  place  by  their  notion  that 
justice  and  right  are  an  insight  common  to  all 
normal  mankind,  a  contribution  of  our  common 
sense.  For  the  war  could  never  have  been 
fought  had  not  each  human  group  in  its  turn 
been  founded  in  the  conviction  that  its  cause  was 
the  just  cause;  wherefore  we  have  had  before  us 
the  profound  and  sobering  spectacle  of  men  in  a 
passion  of  righteousness  slaying  one  another  and 
giving  themselves  up  to  die,  each  that  his  idol 
should  not  fall.  Other  motives,  some  ignoble, 
some  instinctive,  have  played  their  part  in  the 
movement  of  the  war;  but  who  can  doubt  that 
they  pale  into  irrelevancy  beside  the  dominance 
of  these — the  reason,  the  pity,  and  the  sense  of 
right — which  so  resistlessly  give  the  lie  to  all 
that  we  have  adjudged  of  human  nature?  And 
again,  who  can  doubt,  in  his  philosophic  moods, 
that  in  this  great  and  terrible  conflict  of  man 
with  man,  wrath  and  ruth  are  revealed  as  seated 
traits  of  that  nature,  traits  which,  even  when 
noblest,  show  how  sadly  our  affairs  are  out  of 
gear  with  the  world? 

The  philosophy  of  our  past — amused  of  its 
own  drolleries,  enamoured  of  its  own  sagacities, 
convinced  of  its  own  sweet  reasonableness — is 
today  fordone,  blighted  and  withered  under  the 
blazing  apocalypse  of  war.  Its  problems  are  no 


WRATH  AND  RUTH 


221 


longer  problems,  nor  its  solutions  ways  of  grace. 
It  is  true  that  its  language  is  still  spoken  by  the 
many  among  us,  men  with  clogged  ears  and  eyes 
of  clay.  Even  over  the  ruin  ministers  of  con¬ 
solation  come  talking  of  the  eventual  human 
“good”  which  will  make  of  the  war  a  blessing 
and  will  justify  all  its  expenditures,  all  its  blood 
and  torments.  “Justify”?  but  to  whom?  Are 
not  the  slain  slain,  and  can  their  blood  be 
silenced?  Have  not  the  tortured  suffered,  and 
are  their  pains  no  heritage  of  ours?  Is  the  past 
non-existent?  For  whom,  then,  is  the  justifica¬ 
tion?  to  whom  the  good?  The  man  of  affairs 
does  well,  perhaps,  to  forget  upon  what  founda¬ 
tions  he  builds;  but  philosophy  moves  not  save 
by  reflection  and  in  its  essence  it  is  timeless. 

And  again  they  come  to  us,  the  comforters, 
with  the  high  word  Democracy:  it  is  for  democ¬ 
racy,  for  the  race,  for  humanity,  that  all  is  en¬ 
dured.  But  do  we  know,  in  our  heart  of  hearts, 
that  the  democracy  is  worth  it?  If  reason  is  no 
guide,  if  our  masters  are  our  passions,  is  it  in¬ 
deed  so  great  a  thing  to  make  passion  every¬ 
where  free?  .  .  .  Yet  again,  religion  is  to  be, 
not  re-born,  but  re-made :  a  new  religion  of  hu¬ 
manity  is  to  redeem  the  war’s  losses.  But  who, 
among  men  acquainted  with  thought,  can  dream 
that  a  creed  made  to  order  can  win  belief  ?  .  .  . 
Nay,  what  is  the  truth?  Is  not  pugnacity  hu¬ 
man,  and  as  deeply  human  as  charity?  Three 
score  years  of  peace  we  may  have,  for  the  war 
has  been  fearful  and  exhausting;  but  we  can  not 
make  over  human  nature  in  a  day,  and  pug¬ 
nacity,  the  brute  willingness  to  fight,  is  an  in- 


War’s 

justification 


Democracy- 


Pugnacity 


222 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


How  deep 
is  error? 


Science 

and 

the  Good 


stinct  of  human  nature.  Indeed,  it  may  be, 
philosophically  and  truly  speaking,  as  precious 
an  instinct  as  any  that  we  possess,  for  who 
among  men,  up  to  this  hour,  can  give  philoso¬ 
phical  warrant,  to  me  or  any  other  Manichaean, 
that  this  our  universe  is  itself  pacifist,  and  that 
there  is  within  it  no  deep  and  eternal  and  bloody 
warfare  of  good  and  evil? 

To  err  is  human.  .  .  .  Aye,  aye;  but  how  pro¬ 
found,  how  inscrutably  substantial  is  this  illusion 
in  our  human  composition?  What  kind  of  a 
universe  created  me,  that  it  must  deceive  me? 
Is  it,  too,  wandering  and  uncertain  or  is  it  curst 
at  the  core  with  duplicity?  Are  we  altogether 
in  error  about  right  and  wrong,  good  and  evil, 
true  and  false?  and  helplessly  in  error?  Is  there 
no  hold  which  our  reason  or  feeling  or  moral 
sense  can  secure?  Is  there  no  cosmic  sanity, 
no  place  where  men  can  stand  square  with  their 
world? 

Questions  such  as  these  are  the  old  questions 
of  philosophy.  But  the  old  answers  have  played 
out  into  shallows,  and  now  we  must  take  them 
up  again,  from  their  source,  which  is  the  peren¬ 
nial  source  of  human  experience  and  which  today 
is  ruddied  with  new-shed  blood.  It  is  a  weary 
toil,  and  one  oft-repeated  in  the  long  course  of 
human  thinking;  but  it  is  ours.  At  the  outset, 
we  may  be  clear  on  one  point  at  least:  the  ornate 
edifice  which  we  have  named  Science,  and  the 
high  ritual  which  we  have  called  Rationalism, 
are  tokens  of  a  wanton  and  degraded  cult,  only 
to  be  cleansed  save  as  they  be  converted  to  a 
purer  and  humaner  understanding  of  the  Good. 


WRATH  AND  RUTH 


223 


Aforetime  it  was  said,  Tantum  religio  potuit  suadere 
malonim;  today,  with  the  dread  fruits  of  war  out¬ 
spread  before  us,  we  must  repeat,  Tantum  ratio, 
tantum  scientia — to  such  ills  doth  reason  also  per¬ 
suade!  .  .  .  But  at  least  we  recognize  the  ills; 
out  of  the  past  we  have  this  one  conviction  to 
build  upon. 

What  is  the  Good?  That  is  still  our  problem; 
in  philosophy  it  is  the  sole  final  problem.  La 
science  des  chose  s  exterieures  ne  me  consoler  a  pas 
de  rignorance  de  la  morale,  au  temps  d'affliction; 
mais  la  science  des  mceurs  me  consoler  a  toujours 
de  rignorance  des  sciences  exterieures.  So  spoke 
Pascal,  doubting  at  the  beginning  of  our  period 
what  the  succeeding  centuries  have  wholly  justi¬ 
fied  him  in  doubting;  for  this  at  least  we  know 
of  man,  passionate  pilgrim  that  he  is,  his  truth 
is  an  inward  and  driving  truth,  not  a  scaffolding 
of  external  things.  Nay,  Pascal,  in  his  fragment 
De  Vesprit  geometrique,  makes  it  our  very  punish¬ 
ment  and  corruption  that  the  reason  is  enslaved 
to  the  passions,  and  “it  is  to  punish  this  disorder 
by  an  order  conformed  to  it,”  he  says,  “that  God 
casts  his  light  into  the  mind  only  after  having 
conquered  the  rebellion  of  the  will  by  a  sweet¬ 
ness  wholly  celestial,  which  charms  it  and 
leads  it.” 

Your  twentieth  century  philosopher  of  science 
is  perhaps  little  inclined  to  harken  to  the  recluse 
of  Port  Royal,  savant  and  mathematician  though 
he  was;  yet  by  some  such  search  as  Pascal’s,  for 
a  new  grace  and  a  new  illumination  of  the  intel¬ 
ligence,  must  the  quest  of  the  Good  be  carried 
forward.  All  our  powers — reason,  feeling,  moral 


Guidance 
of  reason 


Pascal 


Celestial 

charm 


The  need 
of  Grace 


224 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Man  the 
measure 


Actuality 
is  action 


sense — are  selective  in  their  operation;  all  alike, 
they  pursue  and  they  abandon  pursuit,  and  their 
ends  are  determined  by  some  nature  more  pro¬ 
foundly  ours  than  we  are  willing  to  own.  Yet 
it  is  just  this  profoundly  human  nature,  which 
must  also  in  its  degree  be  the  cosmic  nature, 
that  we  must  fathom,  if  we  are  to  make  for 
philosophy  in  dividing  the  good  from  the  evil 
in  all  that  tempts  us.  Herein  is  shown  our  task, 
herein  the  destiny  of  thought. 

To  be  sure  the  task  is  beset  with  an  apparent 
futility.  Often  as  the  quest  has  been  essayed  in 
the  past,  even  so  often  has  it  ended  in  deception; 
not  that  naught  has  been  gained,  but  assuredly 
naught  in  which  we  could  rest,  no  quiescence, 
no  end:  the  nature  of  man,  which  alone  can 
show  us  the  nature  of  the  world  and  alone  can  be 
the  measure  of  the  Good,  is  still  dark  and  un¬ 
fathomed;  how,  then,  can  we  hope  to  do  better 
than  our  fathers  in  philosophy?  Nay;  we  can 
not.  But  we  shall  do,  perchance  not  as  well  as 
they,  but  still  our  part,  if  we  but  make  the  at¬ 
tempt  in  what  new  light  our  new  experience  has 
given  us.  For,  indeed,  history  itself  is  the  por¬ 
trayal  of  truth,  and  the  search  for  values  is  their 
essence;  we  must  cease  asking  for  values  that 
are  but  eulogies  of  the  past;  we  must  find  them 
in  life  itself,  in  time,  not  in  eternity.  Once  more 
to  quote  the  wise  Pascal:  “Naught  satisfies  us 
save  the  combat;  not  victory  itself”;  and  a  more 
ancient  and  metaphysical  framing  of  the  same 
truth  strikes  off  the  very  form  of  nature,  man’s 
To  which,  again,  Pascal  adds  the  codicil :  ^‘Craindre 
and  the  world’s,  to  yap  epyov  tcAos,  -q  8*  mpycta  to  €pyov. 


WRATH  AND  RUTH 


225 


la  mort  hors  du  peril,  et  non  dans  le  peril;  car  il 
font  etre  homme” 

At  the  last,  so  we  all  know,  to  earth-born 
men  death  must  come,  to  individuals  and  to 
nations  and  to  the  race.  This  fact  also  philoso¬ 
phers  must  contemplate  and  measure.  And  if  we 
say  now  that  the  Good  is  in  our  human  quest 
of  it,  how  can  we  pronounce,  foreseeing  our 
doom,  aught  save  its  ultimate  defeat  and  destruc¬ 
tion?  Are  not  Goodness  and  Beauty,  after  all, 
but  a  flare  in  time,  to  be  snuffed  out  in  eternity? 
Who  shall  be  the  conquerer,  save  the  last  great 
Darkness?  .  .  .  There  is  no  vanity  so  great  as 
is  prophecy;  wherefore  I  would  give  such  token 
as  I  may,  using  the  language  of  probability,  and 
in  the  form  of  a  myth. 

.it.*-  •' 

Through  many  millennia  will  have  passed  the 
circle  of  human  affairs  and  through  many  mil¬ 
lennia  earth  and  sea  and  air  will  have  sur¬ 
rendered  to  human  wills  their  secretest  powers; 
industry  will  have  branded  the  continents  with 
man’s  geometry;  the  arts  will  have  starred  them 
with  monumental  splendors;  in  the  domain  of 
thought  science  will  have  organized  its  numbers 
into  a  very  simulacrum  of  the  perfect  cosmos; 
and  in  polities  all  felicities  will  have  been  lived 
through.  But  yet  other  millennia  will  pass,  and 
the  last  man  will  die  as  certainly  as  the  first  man 
has  died.  But  not  without  heritors.  No  doubt, 
long  ere  this,  man’s  mammalian  companions  will 
have  succumbed;  but  the  birds  will  still  survive. 
Light  of  weight  and  swift  of  wing,  able  to  forage 
in  every  clime  and  to  find  food  in  every  cranny. 


Must 

Goodness 

and 

Beauty- 

die? 


A  myth 


The  birds 
will 

survive 


226 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


the  birds  are  less  slaves  to  gravity  than  is  aught 
other  earth-dweller:  they  can  laugh  at  man’s 
clumsy  aviations,  for  their  domain  of  the  air  is 
not  by  grace  of  earth’s  mineral,  but  in  defiance 
of  it.  And  the  birds  are  artists  and  builders  and 
songsters,  devotees  and  exemplars  of  beauty. 
Wherefore,  long  after  man’s  tall  monuments 
have  crumbled,  and  centuries  after  the  bones  of 
the  last  human  race  have  bleached  and  weath¬ 
ered,  the  birds  will  live  on — Earth’s  final  race — 
and  over  the  tombs  of  men  departed  their  songs 
will  answer  the  music  of  the  spheres,  as  the  Sun 
dies  away  into  the  cosmic  twilight.  Surely  it 
was  the  anticipation  of  such  a  finality  which 
inspired  the  Wikeno  tale  to  which  mine  is  but 
the  supplement;  for  these  Indians  say  that  the 
An  Indian  immortals  would  have  endowed  men  with  ever- 
lasting  life,  but  a  little  bird  wished  death  into 
the  world :  “Where  shall  I  nest  me  in  your  warm 
graves,”  it  cried,  “  if  ye  men  live  on  forever!” 
So  it  was  decreed  that  men  must  die,  and  the 
immortals  returned  to  heaven,  whence  they 
looked  down  and  beheld  men  mourning  their 
dead;  whereupon  mortal  souls  were  transformed 
into  drops  of  the  blood  of  life,  blown  broadcast 
by  the  winds  unto  a  new  birth. 

Those  only  smile  at  myths  who  are  un¬ 
acquainted  with  human  history  and  with  the 
motives  which  lie  deepest  in  human  conduct,  and 
forget  that  that  conduct  is  the  end  and  its  mo¬ 
tives  the  final  motives.  In  our  own  day  and 
hour  we  are  brought  fearfully  and  inwardly  into 
the  presence  of  two  such  motives,  wrath  and 
ruth,  which  have  transfigured,  for  a  new  cycle. 


WRATH  AND  RUTH 


227 


the  visage  of  our  nature.  Let  them  be  but 
righteous  wrath  and  penitential  ruth,  for  our 
penitences  are  our  supreme  credos,  and  our  con¬ 
demnations  are  our  fullest  measures  of  this  two¬ 
fold  world.  Then  may  the  requiem  of  the  birds 
be  as  a  last  great  orison  in  our  behalf,  pleading 
the  cause  of  man,  not  for  what  he  has  done,  but 
for  the  dust  that  is  in  him  and  the  breath  which 
is  his  life,  which  are  of  the  Cosmos,  which  are 
of  God. 

Lacrymosa  die  ilia 
Qua  resurgat  ex  favilla 
Judicandus  homo  reus: 

Huic  ergo  parce,  Deus! 


Wrath 

and 

Ruth 


VII.  HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


Physical 

personality 


....  TO  ctt’  ovpavov  (XTro  yrj<s  SidarYjixa'  Kal  tovt*  dv  cittoi 
Tis  ov  fidkXov  Tij<:  ’'E/aiSos  y  'Ojxrjpov  fiirpov* 

— Longinus. 

I 


There  is  a  way  we  have  of  judging  one 
another  which  is  a  matter  partly  of  intui¬ 
tion  and  partly  of  that  vital  sympathy  we  call 
instinct.  On  meeting  a  stranger  we  form  con¬ 
clusions  about  him  almost  immediately,  respond¬ 
ing  to  his  presence  with  certain  feelings  which 
temper  and  tone  our  conduct  toward  him.  We 
become  aware,  for  example,  of  a  distinctive 
physical  stamina — muscles  strong  or  weak, 
nerves  tense  or  flaccid,  an  impetuous  or  a  ret¬ 
icent  bodily  disposition, — and  we  gauge  the  man 
at  a  given  potential,  acknowledging  or  denying 
his  mastership  of  ourselves. 

Now  all  this  is  not  merely  seeing.  What  the 
sense  of  sight  furnishes  us  is,  at  first  blush,  but 
a  mazy  manifold  of  color  and  light.  It  is  our¬ 
selves  who  interject  into  this  manifold  the  vivid¬ 
ness  of  reality,  the  hue  and  stir  of  life.  If  we 
see  things  distinct,  living,  it  is  only  because  our 
sensations  are  already  perceptions,  entering  con¬ 
sciousness  biased  and  shot  through  by  our  own 
vital  experience.  This  experience  (whether 
stored  in  memory  or  instinct)  is  what  imbues 
sense  with  its  nice  observation.  The  satisfaction 
which  we  feel  in  the  subtle  and  lissome  grace  of 

228 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


229 


a  maid’s  movements,  the  provocation  in  the 
merry  flash  of  her  countenance,  do  not  spring 
from  any  specialty  of  the  vision,  but  from  the 
fact  that  she  is  humanly  close  to  our  sympathies 
and  understanding.  The  Avhole  art  of  human 
living,  the  strange  quick  knowledge  with  which 
the  generations  of  our  ancestors  have  endowed 
us,  falls  into  sudden  illumination,  and  we  greet 
it  with  a  ready  and  responsive  smile. 

Nor  is  this  play  of  vital  sympathies  restricted 
to  perception  of  human  life.  Our  comprehen¬ 
sions  of  animals  are  mainly  ascriptions  of  man¬ 
like  function  to  organisms  whose  analogies  with 
our  organism  cannot  but  be  felt.  We  leap;  we 
run;  in  dreams  at  least  we  fly;  and  when  we  see 
these  actions  performed  or  suggested  by  other 
creatures,  our  understanding — nay,  our  seeing — 
is  in  large  part  an  incipient  imitation  of  them  in 
our  own  bodies. 

The  muscled  beast  has  thus  a  potential  of  its 
own.  The  clean  turn  of  the  limb,  the  compact 
adaptation  of  the  wing,  impress  us  not  as  mech¬ 
anism  but  as  expression  of  movement  and  life. 
And  when  we  see  vixenism  in  the  manners  of 
sparrows,  strenuosity  in  lambs,  a  placid  do¬ 
mesticity  in  the  ruminant  cow,  we  do  but  bring 
into  exercise  some  feature  of  that  general 
animal  nature  of  which  we  with  them  are  co¬ 
heirs.  Of  course  the  nearer  the  action  or  trait 
conforms  to  human  canons  the  closer  is  the  felt 
kinship  and  understanding.  I  doubt  not  that  the 
dog  is  in  some  degree  indebted  for  his  place  in 
our  affections  to  his  cogitative  capacity  for 
wrinkling  the  brows,  and  the  reason  why  the  lion 


Vital 

sympathy 


Kinship 

with 

animals 


16 


230 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Eyes 


Token  of 
intelligence 


seems  so  much  nearer  human  comprehension 
than  the  striped  and  spotted  of  his  kind  may  well 
be  the  impression  of  brow  which  the  mane  gives 
to  the  leonine  countenance;  the  dignity  of  the 
king  of  beasts  is  the  dignity  of  the  aspect  of  in¬ 
telligence. 

But  of  all  the  kinly  tokens  by  far  the  most  im¬ 
pressive  are  eyes.  In  the  presence  of  no  animal 
with  recognizable  eyes  is  man  quite  free  from 
certain  modesties  and  subjective  reservations 
elsewhere  not  manifest.  It  is  not  the  vertebral 
column  but  palpable  eyesight  that  constitutes 
the  true  insigne  of  aristocracy  in  the  animal 
world.  Creatures  the  most  monstrous,  the  octo¬ 
pus,  the  squid,  conspicuously  favored  with  this 
mark,  are  thereby  accorded  thrice  over  the  re¬ 
spect  constrained  from  us  by  all  eerie  life. 

Now  the  reason  for  this  unique  suggestiveness 
of  eyes  is  not  far  to  seek.  For  just  as  movement 
is  the  pre-eminent  token  of  life, — so  that  clouds 
and  lightnings,  winds  and  rivers,  the  circling 
heavenly  bodies,  are  the  last  of  inanimate  ob¬ 
jects  to  lose  animistic  interpretation, — so  is  the 
eye  and  its  seeing  pre-eminently  the  sign  of 
intelligent  life.  An  eye  always  seems  to  mean 
thought — vivid,  tangible  consciousness.  It  may 
be  mild,  innocent,  laughing,  shy,  frank,  bold, 
furtive,  malicious,  cruel,  evil:  all  the  gamut  of 
disposition  and  mood  is  in  it,  all  the  range  of 
purpose  and  desire.  We  follow  it  in  the  thrust 
and  parry  of  conversation,  we  search  it  for  sud¬ 
den  confidences,  we  study  it  as  the  open  ledger 
of  another’s  thoughts,  till  it  becomes  the  out¬ 
ward  epitome  of  intellectual  life.  In  ourselves  it 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


231 


is  the  chief  instrument  for  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge,  whose  deep  impress  causes  us  to 
designate  that  within  to  which  clear  thinking 
is  due  the  ‘mind’s  eye’  while  our  highest  type 
of  knowledge  we  call  ‘inner  vision.’  Hence, 
wherever  eyesight  is,  there,  we  impulsively  feel, 
must  be  intelligence, — though  it  is  only  upon  re¬ 
flection  that  we  recognize  this  intelligence  as  our 
own. 

So  we  read  our  lives  into  other  living  crea¬ 
tures,  judging  their  bodily  feelings  and  appetites 
and  re-creating  their  temperaments  by  analogies, 
a  little  distorted,  from  our  experiences  and  in¬ 
stincts.  But  we  by  no  means  restrict  the  hypo- 
statizing  process  to  animate  forms.  Primevally, 
the  whole  tremulous  world  is  astir  with  impulse 
and  endeavor,  human  at  the  core,  and  the  whole 
geste  of  Nature  is  recorded  in  heroics  and  given 
form  in  the  bright  blazonry  of  man’s  imagina¬ 
tion.  And  even  in  these  maturer  modern  days 
we  have  not  thrown  off  the  ancient  and  neces¬ 
sary  propension;  though  with  a  restricted  and 
stinted  life,  we  still  vivify  and  humanize  nature. 
The  cunning  interplay  of  forces  which  physics 
would  make  the  world  to  be  is  only  the  apo¬ 
theosis  of  motion,  the  machine  at  its  acme. 
And  what  is  the  machine  save  a  monstrous  and 
mutilated  life?  a  body  fitted  with  all  clever  de¬ 
vice,  adapted  to  all  nice  operation,  yet  bereft  of 
that  inner  direction  and  sense  which  alone  can 
give  intelligibility?  The  machine  is  a  companion 
being  to  ourselves,  the  key  to  whose  reality  is 
wanting;  possessing  man-like  efficiency,  it  is  yet 
destitute  of  the  inner  motive  which  makes  that 


Animism 

and 

mechanics 


232 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


efficiency  comprehensible;  hence  it  is  a  thing 
distorted,  deformed,  a  veritable  Frankenstein’s 
monster.  This,  I  take  it,  is  why  we  are  prone  to 
feel  a  nervous  dread  of  our  own  most  character¬ 
istic  handiwork,  the  great  tools  of  our  material 
subsistence,  dimly  realizing  that  in  all  of  them 
is  something  baffiing  reason  and  offensive  to 
friendly  imagination. 

Doubtless  this  suggestion  of  mutilated  life, 
offending  as  it  does  the  ancient  and  deep  sympa¬ 
thies  of  our  kind,  has  much  to  do  with  our  revul¬ 
sion  in  the  presence  of  the  dead.  The  mere  body 
is  a  most  marvelous  machine,  yet  it  is  only  by 
dint  of  sophistic  intellection  that  we  are  able  to 
get  up  a  passable  admiration  for  the  nice  articu¬ 
lation  of  the  skeleton  or  the  neat  economies  of 
the  interplaying  muscles.  The  suggestion  of 
The  body  something  in  principle  infinitely  nobler  than 

and  its  mechanism,  the  suggestion  of  life,  is  too  intimate 

for  us  easily  to  tolerate  its  absence;  we  cannot 
brook  the  fall.  It  is  observable  that  the  skeleton, 
from  which  the  suggestion  is  somewhat  further 
removed,  is  more  susceptible  of  lukewarm  con¬ 
templation  than  is  the  unaltered  corpse,  with  its 
imperious  reminiscence  of  life.  But  with  the  im¬ 
pression  yielded  by  these  what  contrast  is  given 
by  the  sculptor’s  representation  of  the  body! 
Here  there  is  no  thought  of  inner  mechanism; 
there  is  nothing  to  dissect,  nothing  to  tear  apart 
or  analyze;  and  so  there  is  no  hint  of  death  or 
mutilation.  The  whole  work  is  an  invitation  to 
imaginative  interjection  of  vital  fire,  and  in  the 
act  of  appreciation  the  imagination  flashes  the 
response,  imperceptibly  swift.  The  physical 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


233 


form  becomes  an  incarnate  mood,  thrice  intense 
because  thrice  purified  in  its  marble  abstract¬ 
ness;  there  is  no  flaw,  neither  dross  of  flesh  nor 
futility  of  vacillation,  but  just  the  poise  and  in¬ 
stancy  of  living  at  its  height. 

It  is  not  for  me  here  to  enter  upon  the  psychi¬ 
cal  complexities  involved  in  apprehension  of  the 
physical  personality.  Enough  that  these  are 
built  up  of  the  enormously  intricate  histories  of 
our  forefathers’  lives  under  the  control  of  that 
bent  of  Nature  which  has  made  our  race  and  our 
several  characters  what  they  are.  Granted  that 
it  is  not  the  mere  body,  the  mere  machine,  but 
the  living  body,  the  inspirited  man,  that  alone  is 
beautiful  or  terrible  in  human  appearance,  the 
reasons  for  this  or  that  feeling  or  response  in  the 
presence  of  this  or  that  physical  person  belong 
to  what  is  specialized  in  our  natures.  They  be¬ 
long  to  what  I  have  termed  vital  sympathies, 
meaning  those  obscure  yet  ruling  elements  of 
human  character  derived  from  the  life-histories 
of  the  order  of  being,  genus,  species,  race,  to 
which  we  belong.  Our  vital  sympathies  are  in  a 
sense  epitomes  of  these  life-histories;  they  are 
precipitates  of  experience  taking  form  partly  in 
ancient  and  well-ordered  instincts,  partly  in  im¬ 
pulses  and  aptitudes  only  flittingly  grounded  in 
character;  they  are  modes  of  conscious  response, 
ever  on  the  verge  of  manifestation,  and  life 
largely  consists  in  their  play  and  counterplay 
under  the  impulsion  of  the  myriad  suggestions 
of  our  daily  encounters. 

In  these  encounters  familiarity  goes  for  much. 
But  human  nature  is  wide  and  may  be  piqued 


The  ^ 

inspirited 

man 


234 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Traditional 

and 

hereditary 

ideals 


Physical 
life  never 
merely 
physical 


to  the  most  unexpected  interests  and  admira¬ 
tions,  as  Desdemona’s  for  her  Blackamoor.  In 
our  estimates  of  physical  personality  we  owe 
much  to  the  traditionary  ideals  of  our  race, 
whose  heroes  and  ogres  are  the  bases  of  our  ad¬ 
mirations  and  antipathies,  yet  something  we  owe 
to  the  mixed  new  being  each  one  of  us  is — ready 
to  welcome  a  novelty  not  too  novel  or  to  recog¬ 
nize  a  temerarious  magnetism  in  a  type  which 
our  fathers  could  have  found  only  repellant.  At 
the  basis  of  physical  charm  lies  fullness  of  physi¬ 
cal  life — buoyancy,  grace,  strength,  the  clear 
lines  of  the  vigorous  body,  the  bright  hues  of 
health.  But  over  and  above  this,  perhaps  more 
appealing  as  surely  more  subtle,  is  the  sugges¬ 
tion  of  the  animating  mood  or  thought,  be  it  the 
lurking  of  a  wdzened  pre-human  smile,  the 
shadowy  semblance  of  a  dead  and  forgotten  race 
whose  women  alone  survived,  or  the  nettlesome 
anticipation  of  a  froward  evolution. 

Yet  here  I  have  already  passed  the  bounds  of 
the  merely  physical  personality,  am  already  en¬ 
croaching  upon  the  mental  and  spiritual.  This 
is  inevitable.  For  the  man  that  we  meet  in 
physical  space  is  only  the  symbol  of  the  man 
we  deal  with  and  come  to  know.  The  highest 
type  of  human  beauty  and  the  completest  mani¬ 
festation  of  life  is  that  in  which  we  divine  an 
actuating  intelligence  capable  of  rousing  our  own 
to  its  unforeseen  best.  Physical  life  is  never 
merely  physical :  even  the  remote  protozoan  car¬ 
ries  an  unescapable  flavor  of  fussy  sentience, 
while  the  degree  of  consciousness  we  attribute 
to  the  progressive  life-forms  ever  outstrips  the 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


235 


complexity  of  their  physical  development.  For 
this  the  reason  can  be  no  other  than  that  final 
one :  our  human  nature  measuring  itself  forth 
upon  the  world  which  is  its  context. 

II 


There  is,  then,  encountered  in  the  mere  phy¬ 
sical  approach  something  more  than  the  merely 
physical,  something  intangible  but  vivid, — life, 
human  life,  human  nature.  For  its  initial  term, 
consider  the  sleeping  child.  There  is  a  softness 
and  flush  about  the  cheek  and  lips,  a  freshness 
of  the  smooth  clean-curved  brow,  a  mobility  of 
the  delicate  lashes  (all  so  far  from  harsh  and 
waxen  death),  gathering  into  a  kind  of  luminous 
halo,  as  from  a  subtle  and  hidden  flame.  The 
child  is  the  generalized  man,  and  in  the  presence 
of  its  living  body  already  we  grasp  the  scheme 
of  man’s  nature,  instinct  within. 

And  so  when  we  meet  the  man  himself, — vis¬ 
age  over-pencilled  by  that  symbolism  of  the  flesh 
which  it  becomes  the  lesson  of  our  lives  to  read, 
— with  unerring  sense  for  the  real  presence 
transubstantiating  the  physical,  we  guess  beyond 
the  symbol  to  mood  and  thought,  and  beyond 
the  mood  and  thought  to  character  and  power. 
That  we  do  this  is  not  a  little  remarkable,  for 
it  involves  a  kind  of  perpetual  duplicity  of  appre¬ 
hension  which  surely  could  only  have  arisen  in 
compliance  with  a  more  masterful  reality  than 
any  that  pertains  to  ordinary  sense-perception, — 
and  this  human  personality  is. 

Perhaps  our  greatest  analytical  difficulties 
come  in  connection  with  our  most  ordinary 


The  child 
a  general¬ 
ized  man 


Symbolism 
of  the  flesh 


236 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Recogni¬ 

tions 


Social 

living 


modes  of  thought.  Where  familiarity  has  bred 
custom,  we  judge  with  inscrutable  swiftness,  and 
our  keenest  inferences  come  so  impulsively  to 
mind  that  we  accept  them  without  question, — or, 
if  question  occur,  comfortably  accredit  them  to 
intuition.  We  meet  one  another  and  know  one 
another;  or  we  learn  to  know  in  the  briefest 
fragments  of  intercourse.  There  is  a  whole 
complex  impression  which  a  human  being  makes 
upon  a  fellow  human  being,  regulating  the  lat¬ 
ter’s  conduct  toward  him.  Such  impressions 
constitute  our  mutual  recognitions  and  are  the 
cues  by  heed  of  which  we  get  along  together. 

Of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  these  im¬ 
pressions  are  adequate  or  necessarily  true.  They 
are  the  most  superficial  of  acquaintanceships, 
rough  sketches  to  be  filled  in  as  occasion  may 
offer  with  the  detail  of  character.  But  even  so 
they  form  the  general  burden  of  our  social  life; 
and  no  matter  how  simplified  and  made  uniform 
by  social  convention  and  rule,  they  are  yet  of  a 
nature  sufficiently  involved  to  puzzle  compre¬ 
hension.  I  have  already  dwelt  on  the  physical 
impression,  on  the  sharpness  of  its  challenge  and 
the  imperious  speed  with  which  we  throw  back 
the  guess  of  life  and  force :  the  net  result  of  this 
impression  is  a  sense-perception  hardly  obviously 
sensible;  the  net  result  is  an  apprehension  of  a 
life-experience  analogous  to  our  own  and  some¬ 
how  in  sensible  communication  with  ours.  A 
living  human  being  (till  more  be  known)  is  a 
generalized  human  nature,  a  blank  personality 
to  be  stamped  in  the  die  of  experience. 

The  physical  impression  is  thus  a  preliminary 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


237 


outstripped  even  in  its  inception;  following  it 
comes  the  impact  of  the  personality.  It  is  odd 
how  very  little  social  fencing — a  few  common¬ 
places,  a  stray  remark — may  suffice  to  personal¬ 
ize.  We  are  so  very  close  together,  we  mortals, 
or  our  common  human  nature  is  so  sympatheti¬ 
cally  broad,  that  at  least  such  mutual  awareness 
as  is  necessary  for  the  perfunctory  part  of  life  is 
practically  spontaneous.  We  may  not  in  the  pre¬ 
liminary  formality  judge  another  at  full  or  right 
value,  but  we  do  judge  whether  or  not  he  be 
worth  cultivation;  we  judge,  that  is,  whether  he 
represents  the  worthy  or  the  unworthy  possi¬ 
bility  in  ourselves. 

The  truth  is  there  is  a  vastly  involved  criss¬ 
cross  of  the  mental  and  physical  worlds  which 
to  understand  we  must  first  understand  how 
these  worlds  are  never  very  clearly  distinct  in 
consciousness.  Objects  of  sense-perception  have 
not,  as  facts  of  experience,  that  physical  isola¬ 
tion  which  our  neat  definitions  seem  to  imply. 
They  are  all  more  or  less  ‘charged’  with  infer¬ 
ence  and  mood — with  the  psychical  interjection 
which  is  ultimately  what  makes  them  objects 
and  significant. 

Take,  for  example,  a  tree:  the  tree  is  not 
merely  a  play  of  color  and  light  in  three  di¬ 
mensions;  even  for  the  vision  alone  it  is  very 
much  more;  it  is  a  rooted  and  solid  fact,  compact 
of  resistance  and  resilience.  In  seeing  it  we 
directly  perceive  the  hardness  and  stability  of  its 
trunk,  the  pliancy  of  its  twigs,  the  firm  texture  of 
its  leaves — nay,  we  even  perceive  the  ramifica¬ 
tions  and  strenuous  holds  of  its  roots  and  the 


Mental- 

physical 

criss-cross 


238 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Sense- 

perception 


We  know 
one  another 
at  two 
removes 


cells  and  striations  of  its  inner  structure.  Psy¬ 
chologists  used  to  annex  these  qualities  to  the 
visual  image  as  more  or  less  extraneous  asso¬ 
ciations,  but  we  need  only  attempt  the  difficult 
feat  of  perceiving  a  tree-image — mere  color  and 
light — in  place  of  the  palpable  tree,  to  know  how 
completely  we  do  in  fact  (inference  with  im¬ 
pression)  ^sense’  the  object  as  a  whole.  Its 
whole  substance  and  history  is  in  its  mere  pres¬ 
ence. 

In  a  perhaps  more  conclusive  way  aesthetic 
values  enter  into  things.  The  beauty  of  a  rose, 
the  sublimity  of  a  wild  sky,  are  so  much  a  part 
of  the  rose  and  the  sky  that  we  cannot  conceive 
them  without  these  qualities.  The  reality  of 
which  our  feelings  and  the  rose  or  the  sky  are 
at  once  a  part  is  indissoluble. 

Now  all  this,  though  in  kind  the  same,  is  far 
less  difficult  to  comprehend  than  our  percep¬ 
tions  of  persons.  For  when  we  meet  a  man  we 
judge  at  two  removes:  we  see  not  only  in  the 
flesh  a  life,  but  in  the  life  we  see  thought  and 
emotion,  impulse  and  will.  In  his  nods  and 
glances,  twitchings  and  turnings,  we  become 
aware  of  his  perceptions;  in  his  expression,  we 
feel  his  emotions;  in  his  comments  or  silences,  we 
come  to  know  his  thoughts.  We  reconstruct  for 
him  a  state  of  consciousness,  an  inner  life,  which 
gradually,  as  its  reality  grows  upon  us,  seg¬ 
regates  itself  from  the  sensuous  environment, 
becoming  a  distinct  and  separate  world,  analo¬ 
gous  to,  but  not  within,  ours.  This  other  world 
does  not  share  with  ours  even  the  same  physical 
space :  its  visions  and  imaginings  are  in  another 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


239 


space,  to  us  forever  transcendental.  The  touch 
of  a  friend’s  hand,  the  glance  of  his  eye,  is  but  a 
ghostly  token  from  a  realm,  for  all  its  familiarity 
and  urgent  presence,  hopelessly  remote. 

I  imagine  that  a  person  Crusoe-like  long  iso¬ 
lated  from  his  fellows,  on  renewing  their  society 
might  feel  keenly  this  uncanny  sense  of  duplex 
life  and  twained  worlds.  Familiarity  ordinarily 
blinds  us  to  its  strangeness,  and  it  is  only  now 
and  again,  non-plussed  by  another’s  unwonted 
expression  or  by  an  unaccountable  impulse  of 
his  character,  that  we  become  abruptly  aware 
that  what  we  gaze  upon  is  but  the  enigmatical 
shadowing  of  other-conscious  being. 

Yet  not  even  in  the  reconstruction  of  another’s 
consciousness,  strange  as  this  act  is,  do  we  gauge 
the  reach  of  our  inferences.  In  our  daily  inter¬ 
course,  we  by  no  means  rely  upon  inferred 
thoughts  and  feelings  for  our  final  estimate  of 
motive  and  propension.  We  judge  very  much 
farther  than  the  immediate  consciousness;  we 
judge  mood,  disposition,  life  motif:  behind  the 
mental  state  lies  the  moulding  character,  and  this 
is  our  final  reconstruction.  The  sure  proof  is 
that  we  allow  for  a  certain  eccentricity  in  the 
concrete,  momentary  experience,  and  assume  an 
underlying  constancy  and  consistency,  an  endur¬ 
ing,  developing  character,  more  real  and  reliable 
than  any  temporary  conscious  fact.  Indeed,  we 
often  assume  to  know  another  better  than  he 
knows  himself,  counting  his  present  conscious¬ 
ness  as  of  necessity  biased  by  its  environment 
and  so  manifesting  a  kind  of  distemper  of  the 
soul  that  somewhat  distorts  its  real  and  deep  in¬ 
tentions. 


Other¬ 

conscious 

being 


Character 


240 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


A  game 
at  chess 


Non¬ 

physical 

presence 


In  illustration  let  us  suppose  two  unacquainted 
players  to  meet  at  the  chessboard.  The  first  few 
moves  reveal  only  familiarity,  or  want  of  it,  with 
the  conventional  openings.  But  presently,  the 
play  fairly  on,  the  silent  opponents  begin  to  feel 
each  other’s  quality.  On  the  one  side,  we  will 
say,  there  is  conscious  mastery;  on  the  other,  a 
dawning  sense  of  inferiority.  Now  I  know  of 
no  more  realizing  revelation  of  the  power  of 
another’s  personality  than  comes  to  one  who 
feels  himself  helplessly  succumbing  to  the  slow 
toils  of  a  master  player.  Behind  the  insignificant 
bits  of  wood,  flaunting  their  impeccable  assur¬ 
ance,  looms  the  quiet  calculation  of  the  opposing 
mind,  building  up  unescapable  attacks,  frustrat¬ 
ing  every  desperate  expedient  to  freedom.  But 
behind  even  this,  more  invulnerable,  more  ter¬ 
rible,  is  felt  the  reserve  power  of  the  control,  the 
pitiless  sufficiency  of  the  chess-intelligence.  So, 
if  the  weaker  player  stumble  blindly  in  his  play, 
if  his  hand  tremble  and  the  sweat  break  upon 
his  brow,  the  tribute  is  rather  to  the  hidden  and 
machine-sure  mind  than  to  the  trivial  loss  of  an 
idle  game. 

This  illustration — narrowed  as  it  is  to  the  ap¬ 
prehension  of  purely  intellectual  character — sug¬ 
gests  the  vividness  with  which,  on  occasion,  the 
nonphysical  presence  may  be  felt.  For  the 
while,  sense  of  bodily  being  disappears.  The 
conventional  chessmen  on  their  prim  conven¬ 
tional  squares  are  all  of  the  physical  world  that 
the  mind  entertains — no  better  indeed,  than 
purely  mental  symbols.  The  reality  that  is  felt 
is  the  aggressive,  combating  intellect,  with 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


241 


which  one  is  almost  tangibly  in  contact,  and  be¬ 
hind  even  this  is  the  besetting  personality.  One 
stands  on  the  very  verge  of  a  nearer  and  keener 
acquaintanceship  than  human  limitation  allows; 
a  dormant  sense  seems  issuing  as  from  a  vague, 
prenatal  growth  to  give  new  and  powerful 
knowledge. 

Such  intensifications  of  ordinary  judgments — 
found  oftenest,  perhaps,  in  certain  supreme  com¬ 
passions  of  friendship — are,  I  take  it,  sudden 
tensions  or  strainings  of  the  evolutional  motif  in 
accordance  with  which  social  intelligence  de¬ 
velops.  This  motif  demands  of  us  mutual  under¬ 
standings,  mutual  approximations  of  character. 
Whether  these  be  by  the  whetting  of  the  mind’s 
keenness,  through  combat,  or  by  the  broadening 
of  responsiveness,  through  sympathy,  they  must 
needs  in  certain  moments  receive  access  of  con¬ 
scious  force  for  the  reason  that  experience  is 
mainly  given  form  and  fixity  by  its  times  of 
stress.  It  is  the  sharp  spur  of  our  own  need 
that  awakes  in  us  awareness  of  another’s  spirit¬ 
ual  reality. 

Indeed  the  awakening  is  in  large  part  self¬ 
awakening.  We  cannot  see  save  with  the  light 
that  we  bring.  All  comprehension  of  character 
is  ultimately  comprehension  through  sympathy; 
that  is,  through  imaginative  creation  of  the 
other’s  life;  and  it  is  impossible  for  us  imagina¬ 
tively  to  create  ex  nihilo — only  within  the  range 
of  our  own  possibilities  can  sympathy  be  awak¬ 
ened.  I  say  ‘possibilities,’  rather  than  ‘reality.’ 
Much  that  we  are  is  the  time’s  accident:  our 
present  life  is  ‘ours’  merely  by  courtesy;  for  the 


Intensified 

under¬ 

standing 


Sympathy 


242 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


‘Self’ 

elusive 


Colombe 


most  part,  it  is  what  it  is  because  the  world  wills 
it  so.  None  the  less,  in  the  midst  of  this  pre¬ 
occupying  present,  we  are  dimly  conscious  of  a 
vague  half-owned  self,  our  hopeful  ‘best  self,’ 
more  intimate  and  lasting  than  the  superficial 
reality  of  consciousness.  It  is  this  elusive  self 
which  is  expressed  by  and  engrosses  our  ‘pos¬ 
sibilities,’  and  it  is  these  (already  on  the  verge 
of  realization,  perhaps),  which  are  illumined  now 
and  then  in  the  great  moments  of  our  recogni¬ 
tions.  In  the  time  of  stress,  encountering  an¬ 
other  whose  nature  fulfills  our  own  till  then 
hidden  ideal,  we  become  glad  in  his  strength  and 
satisfied  in  his  sufficiency,  little  witting  that  the 
secret  of  our  revelation  of  his  character  is  a  sud¬ 
den  growth  of  our  own. 

In  Colombe' s  Birthday  Browning  portrays  such 
an  encounter.  The  theme  is  elementally  simple : 
Colombe,  in  her  need,  finding  Valence,  thereby 
finds  herself.  Outwardly  the  event  is  her  pro¬ 
gressive  understanding  of  him,  with  its  oddly 
investigative  procedures;  inwardly  and  truly,  it 
is  no  less  than  her  own  soul’s  new  birth.  The 
salient  meaning  of  two  people’s  mutual  knowing 
of  one  another — its  value  and  bearing  for  man 
as  a  social  being — is  directly  phrased.  To  Val¬ 
ence,  in  the  exaltation  of  her  confidence,  Co¬ 
lombe  says: 

“This  is  indeed  my  birthday — soul  and  body, 

Its  hours  have  done  on  me  the  work  of  years  .  .  . 
Believe  in  your  own  nature,  and  its  force 
Of  renovating  mine!  I  take  my  stand 
Only  as  under  me  the  earth  is  firm; 

So,  prove  the  first  step  stable,  all  will  prove. 

That  first  I  choose:  [Laying  her  hand  on  his,] — the 
next  to  take,  choose  you!” 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


243 


And  after  she  has  withdrawn,  the  reciprocal 
change  appears  in  Valence.  He  begins  to  per¬ 
ceive  unsuspected  powers  in  himself  (which,  be 
it  noted,  she  had  seen)  : 

“What  drew  down  this  on  me? — on  me,  dead  once, 

She  thus  bids  live, — since  all  I  hitherto 
Thought  dead  in  me,  youth’s  ardors  and  emprise. 
Burst  into  life  before  her,  as  she  bids 
Who  needs  them.” 

This  may  be  falling  in  love.  From  the  socio¬ 
logical  point  of  view  it  is  none  the  less  interest¬ 
ing,  for  falling  in  love  is,  perhaps,  the  most  im¬ 
portant  of  human  rapprochements.  And  the  es¬ 
sential  point  here  is  that  Browning  shows  what 
it  may  mean,  at  its  highest  efficiency,  for  the 
individuals  concerned. 

Of  course  in  ordinary  leisurely  experience  we 
have  no  equally  aggressive  apprehensions  of  one 
another.  None  the  less  we  do  judge  to  much 
the  same  intent  if  not  to  the  same  degree.  We 
never  stop  with  the  mere  physical  impression 
and  it  is  seldom  that  we  go  no  further  than  the 
current  mental  coinage.  Perhaps  this  may  be 
realized  most  clearly  in  judgments  of  art.  What 
is  it  we  mean  by  ‘knowing’  an  artist?  Is  it  not 
the  result  of  a  series  of  impressions  of  his  work, 
the  work  in  which  he  has  expressed  his  own  see¬ 
ing,  as  well  as  he  may,  and  has  so  given  us  an 
inkling  of  his  style  of  thought?  Under  the 
stimulus  of  his  hints  we  reconstruct  in  ourselves 
something  of  his  feeling  and  point  of  view,  and 
then,  on  the  basis  of  our  common  human  nature, 
instinctively  generalize  the  man.  It  is  the  mode 
of  seeing  or  thinking,  not  the  particular  vision  or 


Valence 


Falling 
in  love 


Under¬ 
standing 
of  art 


244 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  artist's 
style 


The  spark 
of  divinity 


thought,  that  gives  the  clue  to  character.  Man¬ 
ifestly  there  are  all  sorts  of  idiosyncracies  of 
style,  technique,  and  topic,  by  which  we  can 
make  judgments,  but  judgments  on  such  bases 
go  no  deeper  than  the  Bertillon  measurements 
in  the  police  galleries;  it  is  not  by  or  through 
them  that  we  feel  the  cool  charm  of  Corot,  the 
phantasmic  splendour  of  Turner,  or  the  attrac¬ 
tion  of  Rousseau’s  scenic  sagacity;  there  is  some¬ 
thing  beyond  the  canvas,  a  way  of  seeing  it 
coaxes  us  to  master,  which  is  the  real  and  inner 
message  of  the  art. 

But  there  is  no  more  convincing  proof  of  the 
ulteriorness  of  our  judgments  (as  there  is  no 
more  saving  human  virtue)  than  is  to  be  found 
in  our  inveterate  habit  of  discounting  one 
another’s  faults  of  action  to  the  favor  of  char¬ 
acter.  It  is  seldom,  indeed,  that  we  believe  a 
man  quite  so  frail  as  his  deeds.  We  instinctively 
and  thoroughly  believe  in  motives  deeper  than 
conscious  motives  dominating  each  man’s  in¬ 
tention  and  urging  him  to  a  more  ideal  life.  We 
concede  to  him  all  manner  of  weaknesses;  he  is 
in  bond  to  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil; 
but  we  excuse  his  weaknesses  for  the  rigor  of 
the  bond,  and  over  and  beyond  all  insist  that  he 
has  in  himself  a  spark  of  that  divine  impetus 
which  now  and  then  makes  heroes  and  saints, 
and  so  glorifies  our  faith.  It  is  for  this  spark, 
this  ideal  and  real,  yet  unrealized  character,  con¬ 
troverting  his  actions  and  lying  deeper  than  his 
thoughts,  that  we  cherish  our  fellow  man;  it  is 
this,  not  the  partial,  mutilated  being  which  each 
as  an  historical  entity  must  be,  that  we  love  in 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


245 


him ;  and  it  is  this  that  enables  us  to  maintain 
our  own  lives  in^good  courage. 

I  think  it  is  worth  while  to  ask  oneself  what 
is  it  that  gives  dignity  and  nobility  to  such  a 
character  as  Hamlet’s.  Certainly  it  is  nothing 
Hamlet  does;  his  deeds  are  mostly  sorry  blun¬ 
ders.  Nor  again  is  it  his  motives;  revenge  may 
be  dignified,  perhaps,  but  never  noble.  Hamlet’s 
nobility  is  in  his  ideal  self — the  self  that  we  know 
so  vastly  better  than  he  knows  it;  and  his 
tragedy  is  the  tragedy  of  wrecked  possibility,  the 
fine  soul  gone  wry.  We  read  his  life  with  hardly 
a  passing  awareness  of  its  materia,  its  ‘business,’ 
but  the  terrible  breaking  down  of  his  spirit’s 
house  (not  in  madness  but  in  unfulfillment),  this 
it  is  which  arouses  in  us  tragic  terror  and  pity. 

From  all  this  we  may  generalize  that  just  as 
human  nature  is  a  kind  of  natural  law  of  the  hu¬ 
man  species,  so  a  man’s  character  is  a  kind  of 
formulary  of  his  individual  life.  It  is  what, 
crediting  to  environment  some  percentage  of 
aberration,  we  inly  paint  as  his  true  portrait.  It 
is  the  complex  of  motive  which  we  formulate  as 
the  key  to  his  biography — a  harmony  of  impulses 
leading  to  the  harmony  of  effects  which  his  total 
action  involves,  and  wherever  an  action  fails  of 
this  harmony  we  say  that  it  is  not  true  to  his 
proper  self. 

Thus  do  men  come  to  know  one  another.  Of 
this  knowledge  two  traits  are  to  be  noted.  First, 
that  we  seem  to  know  another  better  than  he 
knows  himself,  that  we  judge  beyond  the  tem¬ 
poralness  of  his  present  thought  or  feeling  to 
what  is  steady  and  sure,  nor  ever  reckon  what  he 

17 


Hamlet 


The  key  to 
biography 


246 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

unrealized 

self 


Jean 

Valjean 


Nora 


Giovanna 


actually  is  by  his  own  self-understandings;  we 
universalize  him,  biographize  him,  endow  him 
with  an  ideal  temperament  and  life  motif.  Now 
the  second  trait  concerns  the  meaning  of  our 
knowledge  to  ourselves.  For  what  we  care  for 
and  love  in  another  is  just  this  ideal,  unrealized 
self :  never  what  he  is,  but  what  he  promises  to 
be;  never  the  seen  fact,  always  the  biding  possi¬ 
bility. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  I  mean  to  afhrm 
our  knowledge  of  one  another  to  be  always  sure 
or  true.  That  is  far  from  the  fact.  Most  of 
what  is  heartrending  in  human  life  comes  from 
our  incomprehensions.  In  the  long  years  of 
Javert’s  persecution  of  Jean  Valjean  he  under¬ 
stood  neither  his  victim  nor  himself.  Maeter¬ 
linck  turns  the  tragedy  of  Monna  Vanna  upon  a 
wife’s  too  idealistic  confidence  in  a  husband’s 
faith  in  her.  Ibsen’s  Nora  awakes  with  pitiful 
surprise  to  find  her  own  spiritual  deformity  out¬ 
matched  by  her  husband’s  littleness  and  selfish¬ 
ness.  Yet  each  of  these  instances  is  in  another 
way  instructive.  For  Javert  at  the  last  discovers 
his  own  unsuspected  capacity  of  being  noble — 
beaten,  though  it  be,  for  this  life.  And  Giovanna, 
self-betrayed,  through  her  husband’s  frailty  yet 
finds  self-knowledge.  While  finally  the  truth  and 
magnanimity  of  Ibsen’s  idealism  forbade  that 
Nora  should  believe  even  Helmer  hopelessly 
lost :  having  faith  in  her  own  possible  redemp¬ 
tion,  she  could  not  wholly  deny  his. 

The  significance  of  our  efforts  to  understand 
one  another  is  less  their  achievement  than  their 
endeavor.  The  fact  of  the  effort  is  a  fact  of  self- 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


247 


stimulation.  In  seeking  to  know  others  we  come 
to  know  better  ourselves,  and  in  emulating  what 
we  conceive  to  be  noble  in  others  we  develop 
our  own  best  possibilities.  Perhaps  the  very 
essence  of  love  is  that  it  arises  between  persons 
whose  mutual  contacts  call  forth  most  fully  the 
hidden  idealizations  in  each  other’s  character; 
and  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  richest  and 
finest  life  is  just  that  which  is  responsive  to  the 
widest  play  of  human  influences,  or  that  the  es¬ 
sential  process  of  human  living  is  the  bringing 
into  clear  consciousness  of  latent  ideals.  In 
reconstructing  our  fellows,  we  measure  them  by 
our  own  natures  and  so  come  to  know  ourselves 
through  them.  This  subtle  mutual  awakening  is 
what  we  mean  by  human  influences  and  it  is  the 
great  source  of  the  solidarity  of  mankind. 

Ill 

Approach  to  the  difficult  question  of  self-knowl¬ 
edge  might  seem  most  natural  by  way  of  a  con¬ 
sideration  of  self-consciousness.  But  self-conscious¬ 
ness  is  a  relatively  late  and  extraneous  development 
of  experience.  Indeed,  except  as  precipitated  in 
reflection,  it  is  little  more  than  a  pervasive  flavor, 
a  seasoning,  of  the  simpler  conscious  processes;  it 
is  never  strictly  a  state  of  mind  but  rather  a  way 
of  accepting  experience — a  prejudice  of  the  idiosyn¬ 
cratic  personality,  one  might  say. 

It  is,  then,  not  in  self-consciousness,  but  in  the 
more  primitive  experience,  within  which  this  arises 
that  clues  to  the  self’s  nature  must  be  sought.  Now 
the  immediate  and  striking  impression  of  this  primi¬ 
tive  experience  is  of  extreme  fragmentariness  and 


Essence 
of  love 


Self- 

conscious¬ 

ness 


248 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Primary 

experience 


Ephemeral 

interests 


localness.  Perceptions,  feelings,  thoughts,  are  all 
broken  and  ephemeral.  They  come  as  scant  touches 
of  fact,  hints  of  reality  which  it  is  ours  to  fill  out 
or  interpret  as  need  or  facility  may  incline.  Our 
most  concrete  sensations  are  nine-tenths  inference 
and  the  vast  majority  of  our  psychical  haps,  could 
they  be  disentangled  from  the  general  texture,  would 
be  found  too  gossamer  to  serve  any  tug  of  expe¬ 
rience.  Only  their  multitudinousness  enables  the 
general  impression,  their  incessant  variegation  pro¬ 
ducing  the  “mental  play”  which  forms  the  color- 
tone  of  our  conscious  life.  The  individual  tingles 
and  swelters,  the  flickers  and  glares  and  buzzes  and 
hums,  the  flutters  of  anticipation,  the  dumpish  dis¬ 
contents,  all  the  stresses  and  balks  in  the  awful 
business  of  thinking — these  are  but  the  hurrysome 
bubbles  of  reality,  and  it  is  only  by  dint  of  their 
mutual  accelerations,  turn  by  turn  boosting  one 
another  into  the  focus,  that  we  give  due  heed  to 
each,  and  so  perform  the  material  obligations  of 
life. 

Such  ephemera  are  perforce  concerned  mostly 
with  temporary  interests — ^bodily  stokerage,  mental 
jockey ings,  adjustments,  preliminaries,  convenien- 
cies.  Environment  exacts  from  us  a  deal  of  mental 
clutter  just  to  remind  us  that  we  live  in  a  social 
world,  and  doubtless  there  is  educational  value  in 
the  experience  so  urged  forth;  it  furnishes  material 
ballast  and  steadies  us  in  our  general  trend.  But 
it  is  not  the  experience  we  live  for.  It  is  too  utterly 
transient  to  point  any  permanent,  motivating  in¬ 
terest.  Such  interests  come  rarely  to  the  surface. 
Nature  is  infinitely  deliberate,  infinitely  tentative, 
in  her  procedures;  there  are  no  blind  rushes  to  the 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


249 


goal,  but  the  exhaustless  preparation  of  one  who 
can  abide  unmeasured  time.  It  is  matter  of  little 
wonder,  then,  if  the  telling  experiences  of  human 
life  come  only  at  spacious  intervals,  seldom  at  our 
behest  and  never  at  our  command  to  hold.  They 
are  wild,  free  instants,  vouchsafed  rather  than 
chosen. 

The  significamt_^ct  is  that  we  Jive  not  for  Jhe 
routine  but_ j^_the--rar€''m5"ment.  The  proof, 
curiously  enough,  is  seldom  interbound  in  the 
exceptional  experience  itself.  We  have  too  little 
active  discrimination  or  a  too  strong  prepossession 
for  'affairs’  to  be  quick  and  adept  in  recognizing 
what  is  of  vital  significance  for  ourselves.  But 
time  is  test  and  temperer.  It  is  their  relative  per¬ 
manence  which  concretes  for  us  what  we  call 
‘things,’  physical  objects;  it  is  what  turns  out  to  be 
that  we  name  truth;  and  it  is  his  living  past  which 
makes  the  reality  and  limns  the  contour  of  each 
human  character. 

Eventually  this  character  makes  itself  known  by 
the  nature  and  harmony  of  the  experiences  which 
it  has  assimilated.  We  cannot  predict  what  we  are 
going  to  remember  or  what  we  are  going  to  profit 
by;  but  after  a  course  of  years  we  find  that  there 
has  taken  place  a  selection  and  interweaving  of 
certain  past  events  which  has  built  up  for  us  a 
background  of  definite  feeling  and  predilection.  This 
is  symbolized  to  the  mind  by  the  memory-series 
most  spontaneously  owned, — for  the  memory  by  the 
fact  of  preservation  gives  evidence  of  the  original 
impressiveness  of  that  which  it  records,  while  at  the 
same  time,  by  the  transmutation  it  invariably  suf¬ 
fers,  its  warp  or  bias,  it  becomes  a  symbol  of  the 


Rare 

moments 


Natural 

selection 

of 

experience 


250 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Memory 

portraits 


Childhood 

dreams 


personal  equation  and  a  gauge  of  inner  growth. 

But  rarely  or  never  is  the  memory  portraiture 
vividly  complete.  We  have  ‘on  tap’  very  little  accu¬ 
rate  knowledge  of  ourselves.  We  are  continually 
discovering  unsuspected  whims  and  bents  and 
knacks;  perhaps  the  fundamental  zest  of  life  lies 
just  in  this  element  of  self-surprise,  learning  what 
we  are  in  finding  out  what  we  can  do.  I  presume 
the  fullest  and  fairest  internal  account  should  be 
the  experience  traditionally  ascribed  to  the  drown¬ 
ing  man — a  sort  of  bioscopic  review  of  his  past  in 
prestissimo  time.  Yet  it  should  be  noted  that  the 
mere  succession  of  salient  scenes  is  not  in  itself 
significant.  The  scenes  are  but  symbolism  of  the 
character  which  has  chosen  them,  and  before  there 
can  be  real  self-understanding  there  must  be  an  in¬ 
ternal  criticism,  an  appreciation,  analogous  to  our 
critical  appreciations  of  an  artist’s  work.  What 
memory  preserves  for  us  are  selections,  sketches, 
adumbrations,  of  experiences,  the  unique  elements 
being  set  forth  with  that  proper  exaggeration  which 
is  the  artist’s  licence.  Hence,  meanings  appear  that 
were  quite  unrecognized  at  the  moment  of  expe¬ 
rience,  indicating  some  happy  concord  of  the  event 
with  the  hidden  impulsions  of  our  nature. 

It  is  perhaps  worthy  of  by-remark  that  among 
the  remembered  facts  many  are  the  mintage  of 
dreams,  that  (at  least  for  early  childhood)  the 
dreamworld  has  in  large  part  been  the  real  world. 
This  fact  may  have  reason:  the  comparative  free¬ 
dom  from  busybody  sensation  which  in  the  dream 
state  allows  sharper  and  deeper  impression  of  what 
is  to  be  meaningful.  The  dream  gives  free  rein  to 
the  hidden,  creative  motive,  enabling  it  to  present 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


251 


experience  in  a  form  more  appropriate  to  its  design 
than  could  be  by  mere  emphasis  of  the  run  of  affairs. 

So  the  notable  trait  of  the  time-fabricated  mind 
is  that  it  has  its  own  peculiar  way  of  looking  at 
things.  It  is  formed  by  a  synthesis  of  select  expe¬ 
riences,  each  having  some  special  accord  with  the 
anticipated  scheme  or  mode  which  is  to  be  its  way 
of  thinking.  Eventually  all  that  it  entertains  be¬ 
comes  overcast  with  the  glamour  of  its  peculiar 
nature,  and  forms  an  assemblage  of  symbols  of 
our  proper  selves,  so  that  we  can  say  of  a  style  of 
thought,  ^‘That  is  mine,  my  view,  my  artistry.” 
The  foundation  of  the  individual  human  character 
is  thus  an  inner  and  instinctive  shaper  of  the  man’s 
perceptions  and  tastes,  a  formative  principle  or 
force  which  is  the  very  essence  of  himself, — though 
by  a  strange  and  paradoxical  necessity  of  nature  it 
seems  rather  to  be  some  inner  genius  or  familiar, 
half  alien,  half  shadow. 

The  paradox  is,  of  course,  the  paradox  of  that 
inward  lie,  self-consciousness.  Consciousness  in  its 
ordinary  processes  is  a  temporizing  between  char¬ 
acter  and  environment;  its  concernments  are  with 
trivialities,  temporary  interests.  Character,  so  far 
as  realized,  is  a  kind  of  autobiography,  a  synthetic 
selection  from  the  life-history  as  preserved  in 
memory.  But  in  all  this  there  is  no  self-conscious¬ 
ness  :  self-consciousness  is  not  needed  for  mere 
experience,  and  so  far  from  being  a  part  of  the 
memory-experience,  the  latter  is  rather  its  object 
and  its  antithesis.  Self-consciousness,  in  fact,  is  a 
confessed  untruth :  it  is  not  an  awareness  of  the 
self,  but  of  a  kind  of  relation  subsisting  between 
the  self  and  its  objects.  Primarily  it  arises  as  a 


The  inner 
genius 


Character 

auto¬ 

biographic 


252 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  ego 


Birth  of 
self- 

conscious¬ 

ness 


sense  of  antagonism  between  the  achieved  and  the 
sought  experience,  between  the  wish  of  the  true  self 
and  the  will  of  the  environment.  It  is  a  setting  of 
actual  against  ideal  experience,  and  in  its  bitterest 
concentration  a  condemnation  of  the  actual  for  the 
sake  of  the  ideal.  It  is  the  recognition  of  the  exis¬ 
tence  of  a  true  self  to  which  we  are  not  and  can 
never  be  quite  true,  and  it  comes  into  keen  being 
as  the  surface  moil  of  the  inner  conflict.  The  ‘T” 
that  it  proclaims  is  a  contentious,  dissatisfied  “I,” 
setting  up  inward  deficiencies  against  uncompromis¬ 
ing  outward  fact,  milled  betwixt  inner  weakness 
and  outer  perversities,  and  pleading  of  its  Ideal 
relief  from  its  painful  bondage  to  a  foreign  reality. 

What  I  believe  to  be  my  earliest  memory  is  of 
a  sultry  summer  day  in  a  room  where  a  brother 
and  sister  were  at  play  while  I  sat  withdrawn  on  a 
bench  at  the  window.  A  white  china  dish  with  a 
bar  of  yellow  soap  was  on  the  window-sill,  and  the 
panes  were  covered  with  moisture  so  that  the  sun 
shone  through  yellowed  and  sickbed.  I  remember 
gazing  curiously  at  the  soiled  gingham  dress  I  wore, 
at  the  stocking  crumpled  down  over  the  shoe.  A 
strange  irrational  loneliness  had  laid  hold  on  me, 
and  the  ugliness  of  the  soap,  the  distressful  yellow 
sun,  the  incomprehensible  self  in  the  incompre¬ 
hensible  gingham  dress,  all  gradually  merged  into 
a  vague  and  desolate  wonder,  how  I  could  be  I, 
so  helplessly  small  in  the  midst  of  a  big  unmindful 
world.  It  was  the  utter  forlornness  which  only 
childhood  knows,  and  which  comes  in  childhood 
never  again  with  the  keenness  of  that  first  moment 
in  which  is  felt  the  frailty  of  the  puny  self  set  to 
follow  its  solitary  way. 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


253 


Self-consciousness  never  quite  overcomes  this 
first  childish  bewilderment.  In  fact,  it  never  be-  its  be¬ 
comes  a  real  understanding  of  the  self.  It  is  always  wilderment 

a  restricted,  local,  emotional  self-regard,  colored  by 
present  awkwardness,  irritated  by  vanities  rebuked, 
piqued  by  Nature’s  indifferences.  If,  for  the  nonce, 
it  be  assumed  at  the  behest  of  a  cold  intention,  while 
we  resort  to  deliberate  self-survey,  it  loses  its  natural 
warmth  and  prick  and  becomes  a  mere  fiction.  The 
reflective  self-consciousness  of  the  psychologist  is 
nothing  less  than  the  mind  out  of  focus;  it  is  a  state 
only  to  be  attained  by  disciplinary  nurturings,  to  be 
held  only  by  solemn  coddlings,  and  its  ostensible 
character — subjective  distorted  into  objective — is  a 
contradiction  in  terms. 

Yet  for  all  its  stilted  nature,  self-consciousness  is 
perhaps  the  most  significant  of  our  inner  tokens. 

It  is  significant  not  as  an  intelligent  apprehension 
of  the  self  but  for  the  fact  of  apprehension.  The 
very  fact  that  it  feels  a  grievance  with  manifest 
Nature  makes  it  indicative  of  an  experience  more 
inclusive  than  any  which  present  reality  knows;  it 
implies,  that  is,  the  whole  man. 

Self-consciousness  must  not  be  mistaken  for  self-  Self- 
knowledge.  Common  experience  teaches  this  well 
enough,  yet  the  empirical  plausibility  of  the  self- 
conscious  state  constitutes  a  formidable  bias.  A 
Napoleon’s  cool  consciousness  of  his  own  ambitions, 
his  own  powers,  is  bound  to  seem  to  him  a  fair 
measure  of  himself.  But  the  real  measure  can  be 
given  only  in  the  historical  portrait  got  by  scien¬ 
tifically  deducting  the  accidents  due  to  environment 
and  so  showing  what  of  the  world’s  addition  went 
to  his  making.  Doubtless  Napoleon’s  contained  Napoleon 


254 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Summary 


self-perception  was  to  him  a  true  token :  it  actually 
designated  a  real  and  capable  self.  Yet  it  was  not 
knowledge  of  that  self.  Its  function  was  locally 
dynamic ;  to  impel  to  the  confident  career.  But  even 
so  it  was  symptomatic  of  a  condition  or  power  in 
the  world,  Napoleonhood,  which,  when  from  his 
making  the  world’s  share  is  deducted,  is  the  residual 
truth  of  the  Napoleonic  self. 

For  our  purposes,  this  symptomatic  character  of 
self-consciousness  is  its  central  interest.  Even 
where  it  does  not  define,  it  unequivocally  points  the 
fact  of  a  persistent  and  dominant  ^control’  in  human 
nature,  forming  the  core  of  human  personality. 

IV 

Let  us  take  stock  of  progress.  We  have  seen  that 
men  judge  of  one  another,  first,  the  fact  of  con¬ 
sciousnesses  other  than  their  own,  and,  second,  the 
fact  of  characters  dominating  these  consciousnesses 
by  an  inner  and  profound  control.  We  have  seen, 
again,  how  within  his  own  conscious  experience  a 
man  is  made  aware  of  the  existence  of  its  control, 
his  character;  first,  by  the  selective  synthesis  of  his 
memories  built  into  a  symbolism  of  the  ego;  and, 
secondly,  by  self-consciousness,  which  is  significant 
as  the  sign  of  a  process  of  adjustment  of  the  inner 
character  to  the  outer  circumstance,  and  hence  as 
a  token  of  the  verity  of  the  inner  being. 

Now  I  wish  to  be  as  direct  as  possible.  The  facts 
are:  ( 1 )  A  consciousness.  (2)  A  life-history  more 
or  less  fully  reflected  in  the  conscious  life.  (3)  A 
‘control’ — ^be  it  force  or  factor — ^making  the  con¬ 
sciousness  what  it  is  from  moment  to  moment  and 
moulding  the  life-history  to  the  unity  and  consist- 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


255 


ency  that  enables  us  to  give  it  a  personal  name. 

The  bald  question  follows :  Is  this  ‘control’  a  The  soul 
real  agent,  an  elemental  being  holding  the  hegemony 
of  man’s  constitution?  or  is  it  a  physical  force,  or 
a  sporadic  eddy  of  forces,  in  the  inclusive  mechanism 
of  Nature?  Have  we  to  do  with  a  soul  in  the  old 
Scholastic  sense  of  the  word,  an  ens  spiritualef  or 
are  we  merely  concerned  with  the  subtle  involutions 
of  some  yet  undiscovered  ‘organic  ray’  ? 

Fortunately  the  question  requires  no  a  priori  pros 
and  cons.  Though  Hume  and  Kant  have  demon¬ 
strated  that  we  can  think  without  explicit  reference 
to  a  thinking  agent,  they  have  not  made  the  con¬ 
ception  of  such  an  agent  irrational  and  they  are 
far  from  having  given  any  explanation  of  the  actual 
generation  of  thought;  the  soul  has  become  em¬ 
pirically  unnecessary,  perhaps,  but  not  irrational  nor 
unphilosophical.  As  for  a  physics  of  human  per¬ 
sonality,  if  it  exist  at  all  it  is  rather  as  an  arrogation 
of  the  scientific  consciousness  than  as  an  hypothesis 
of  scientific  thought. 

We  have  here  no  call  for  metaphysical  discus-  Belief 

•  1*  *  *  *1  *1i*1  souls 

Sion.  The  question  is  primarily  an  evidential  one, 
and  on  this  count  it  is  instructive  merely  that  its 
asking  is  reasonable.  Its  mere  intelligibility  implies 
some  empirical  evidence  for  the  truth  of  its  supposi¬ 
tions  ;  they  are  at  least  thinkable  of  reality.  Further, 
the  conception  of  the  soul  must  have  some  sort  of 
bionomic  significance  for  the  human  species  in  the 
order  of  Nature.  It  plays  a  long  role  in  the  story 
of  our  mental  evolution  and  it  is  not  credible  (from 
what  we  know  of  Nature,  from  the  inner  principles  " 
of  reason  itself)  that  a  conception  with  so  significant 
a  history  could  have  arisen  without  a  real  ground 


256 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


John  Doe’s 
potentiali¬ 
ties 


in  man’s  constitution.  We  have  in  part  seen  what 
that  ground  is :  the  consistency  of  human  conduct 
and  the  individuality  of  human  thought  and  percep¬ 
tion;  but  we  have  as  yet  no  inkling  of  what  must 
be  the  essential  character  of  the  soul — spiritual  or 
material,  conscious  or  physical, — and  it  remains  to 
be  seen  if  its  conscious  manifestations  are  ever  such 
as  to  give  real  clues  to  this  character. 

The  portrait  of  any  given  man  at  any  given  time 
depicting  just  his  displayed  mental  and  physical 
traits  could  never  be  an  adequate  portrait.  John 
Doe,  here  and  now,  is  much  more  than  his  body 
and  his  thoughts.  He  is  more  even  than  these  plus 
his  past,  his  history.  Indeed,  his  primary  signifi¬ 
cance  is  not  in  all  this;  his  primary  significance 
is  the  series  of  possible  actions  and  thoughts  which 
he  represents,  his  potentialities.  These  potentialities 
may,  for  aught  we  know,  be  historically  unreal; 
they  may  represent  no  actual  conduct  destined  to 
take  place ;  John  Doe  may  die  next  moment.  Never¬ 
theless,  we  cannot  think  him  without  them;  we 
cannot  think  him  as  not  being  them ;  they  are  a  part 
of  what  he  is  for  us  in  his  estate  as  man.. 

An  instinct  is  an  elementary  example  of  such 
potentialities.  An  instinct  is  described  as  a  predis¬ 
position  to  act  in  a  certain  way  in  a  given  narrowly 
determined  situation;  it  is  never  an  actual  event 
until  the  situation  occurs.  Yet  we  doubt  the  reality 
of  instincts  no  more  than  we  doubt  the  reality  of 
physical  laws;  they  are  part  of  what  we  are  bound 
to  count  on  in  estimating  John  Doe;  they  are  essen¬ 
tial  features  of  his  human  entelechy,  and  like  all 
possibilities,  represent  qualities  which  we  cannot  help 
judging  to  have  a  foundation  of  current  reality  even 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


257 


though  it  be  not  now,  and  may  never  be,  called  into 
manifest  play.  No  man — in  this  world,  at  least — 
ever  exhausts  his  possibilities.  Each  human  life  de¬ 
velops  as  its  accidents  permit,  and  we,  judging  the 
man,  give  him  credit  for  powers  which  a  happier 
fortune  might  have  called  forth.  We  form  our  con¬ 
ception  of  him  sub  specie  ceternitatis,  realizing  that 
the  haps  and  issues  of  a  lifetime  are  all  too  meager 
to  give  his  adequate  measure. 

‘Human  nature’  as  a  category  of  our  thinking 
means  to  us  that  man’s  self  as  a  real  factor  in  the 
world  is  potentially  greater  than  its  current  history. 
In  other  words.  Nature  has  exceeded  the  exigencies 
of  his  destined  career  and  has  made  him  better  than 
his  opportunities.  This  truth  is  the  key  to  our  whole 
social  consciousness,  and  it  is  the  basis  of  all  inter¬ 
course  between  man  and  man.  It  is  the  rationale 
of  human  progress  and  the  ground  of  human  free¬ 
dom.  In  our  mental  life  it  is  evidenced  by  the 
endless  series  of  ideal  constructions — imaginings, 
schemes,  plans,  hypotheses — which  form  the  prefaces 
of  our  actions.  In  our  natures,  as  they  develop,  it 
is  represented  by  the  evolutional  motifs  which  they 
reveal,  the  actualities  of  today  being  conceivable 
only  as  the  expression  of  some  impulse  or  power 
latent  in  time  past.  Aristotle  was  the  first  great 
evolutionist,  for  he  proclaimed  that  no  being  is 
bounded  by  its  present  display,  its  actuality;  its 
essential  nature  is  rather  a  form  which  now  and 
here  it  only  partially  embodies;  its  essential  nature 
includes  its  potential  being,  and  without  reckoning 
potentialties  as  real,  evolution  is  nonsense. 

We  have,  then,  already  a  partial  clue  to  the  char¬ 
acter  of  man’s  hidden  self :  It  must  be  an  ideal. 


Human 

nature 


Aristotle 
an  evolu¬ 
tionist 


258 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

hidden 

self 


Association 
of  ideas 


form-giving  character;  it  must  represent  life-motive 
and  hold  a  kind  of  balance  of  power  as  between 
events,  so  yielding  what  we  call  freedom  of  choice; 
it  must  be  made  up  of  anticipations  of  experience 
held  as  in  perpetual  leash  for  the  possible  occasion 
of  their  realization.  A  man’s  soul  cannot  be  less 
than  the  sum  of  his  capabilities,  and  since  these  are 
invariably  deduced  from  their  partial  display  in  the 
conduct  which  aims  to  realize  them,  it  is  hardly 
thinkable  that  the  soul  can  be  other  in  kind  than  a 
fuller,  inner  realization, — that  is,  its  nature  must 
be  an  extension  of  our  own  idealizing  consciousness. 
But  we  are  not  to  rest  here.  Another  set  of  facts 
gives  evidence  to  the  same  conclusion. 

Lying  at  the  very  heart  of  man’s  capable  life  are 
those  spontaneities  of  thought  and  imagination  ex¬ 
pressed  to  consciousness  in  what  I  called  heretofore 
the  mind’s  individual  artistry.  Even  the  simplest 
mental  processes  betray  this  artistry.  It  appears  in 
perception  in  the  wilfulness  of  our  points  of  view; 
no  two  people  see  the  same  thing  in  the  same  light, 
for  the  light  is  an  inner,  individual  illumination.  It 
appears  again  in  thinking.  ‘Association  of  ideas’ 
has  long  been  a  key  phrase  in  descriptions  of  mental 
phenomena,  but  it  explains  nothing;  it  merely  nar¬ 
rates  the  fact  that  consciousness  passively  views 
series  of  selected  ideas  presented  to  it.  The  sig¬ 
nificant  point  is  that  ideas  are  ‘selected’  as  if  by 
conscious  will  yet  not  in  consciousness;  they  are 
selected  according  to  rationality  and  relevancy  yet 
by  no  conscious  reasoning.  Here  is  the  action  of 
a  proper  intelligence  which  yet  does  not  appear. 
The  supreme  aid  comes  from  the  mind’s  hidden 
part:  there  is  a  state  of  puzzle,  a  melange  of  tugs 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


259 


and  tags,  doubts  and  debates,  and  then  the  un¬ 
announced  precipitate  solution.  A  state  of  insight  insight 
springs  from  some  power  of  thought  more  clear¬ 
sighted,  less  annoyed  by  obtrusive  sensation,  than 
are  ordinary  speciously  conscious  powers.  Here 
again  we  have  evidence  of  the  enlargement  of  mind 
beyond  its  conscious  bounds. 

But  the  most  palpable  case  of  the  intervention  Imagination 
of  the  subconscious  is  in  imagination.  Imaginative 
creations  are  so  utterly  spontaneous  and  individual, 
so  fraught  with  self-surprise,  so  masterful  of  other 
mental  forms,  that  we  ascribe  them  almost  as 
matter-of-course  to  the  workings  of  some  hidden 
inspiration.  They  are  not  the  gift  of  outer  but  of 
inner  nature,  and  their  beauty  is  wholly  or  largely 
due  to  our  recognition  in  them  of  this  inner  nature  ; 
it  is  the  divine  impress  of  the  creative  personality. 

The  inception  of  the  imaginative  act  is  the  ‘sugges-  Suggestion 
tion,’ — an  event  of  anysoever  sort  which  the  after¬ 
event  may  own  as  its  antecedent;  the  suggestion  is 
a  cue  to  the  imaginative  creation,  but  it  has  in  itself 
no  dynamic  power.  It  is  laid  hold  of  by  the  imag¬ 
ination,  it  is  vitalized,  metamorphosed,  and  bye  and 
bye  appears  the  creation, — perhaps  a  half-caught 
wonder-form  rousing  to  pursuit,  perhaps  the  coro¬ 
nate  beauty.  Between  the  suggestion  and  the 
achievement  there  is  a  lacuna:  a  period  of  incuba¬ 
tion,  transformation,  creative  craftsmanship,  inner 
growth — call  it  what  we  may,  the  essential  fact  is 
a  great  change  wrought  in  darkness  and  in  a  mode 
no  man  prevised.  Somewhere  within  the  personality 
of  man  is  a  hidden  power  capable  of  recognizing  in 
suggestions  their  possibilities  and  of  moulding  them 
to  its  own  peculiar  style  and  intent.  Plato  called 


260 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Self-  _ 
portraiture 


Primitive 

spiritism 


this  the  Idea,  and  we  have  not  yet  reached  a  philo¬ 
sophical  surety  that  can  enable  us  to  pronounce  it 
other  than  an  ideal  force. 

The  potent  truth  is  that  the  whole  of  the  mind’s 
revelation  is  a  patchwork.  Our  mental  events  are 
like  an  artist’s  separate  canvases,  fragmentary  of 
his  whole  meaning,  and  to  achieve  a  fair  portraiture 
we  are  compelled  to  fill  in  innumerable  gaps,  till 
our  restorations  outbalance  the  verity.  Just  as  in 
the  perception  of  a  tree  we  ideally  reconstruct  the 
major  portion  of  what  seems  to  be  given  by  sense, 
so  do  we  reconstruct  a  man’s  soul  (be  it  our  own 
or  another’s) ;  and  just  as  our  completion  of  the 
tree  is  with  physical  qualities,  so  do  we  supplement 
what  we  perceive  of  the  man  with  spiritual  qualities. 

V 

No  fact  in  mental  history  is  better  attested  than 
the  naturalness  of  man’s  recognition  of  the  supple¬ 
mentary  part  of  his  being.  Primitive  folk  display 
a  multitude  of  odd  beliefs  about  the  soul  indicating 
its  independence,  in  will,  in  act,  or  in  presence,  of 
the  familiar  body  and  mind  to  which  it  belongs. 
The  Melanesian  believes  himself  able  to  extract  his 
‘life’  by  sufficiently  powerful  magic,  and  by  conceal¬ 
ing  it  from  his  enemies,  so  to  protect  his  body  from 
harm.  The  old  Egyptian  was  assured  that  the  Ka, 
the  ‘life,’  dwells  beside  the  mummy  through  the  un¬ 
counted  years  in  which  it  awaits  the  summons  to 
again  enter  and  reanimate  the  body.  Teutonic  peo¬ 
ples  are  far  from  alone  in  their  belief  in  a  Doppel- 
ganger  executing  unawares  man’s  spiritual  missions. 
And  the  Roman’s  cult  of  his  Genius,  dominating 
his  life  as  a  sort  of  personal  deity,  finds  an  analogue 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


261 


in  the  Fravashi  of  the  Persian,  his  representative 
“in  the  presence  of  Ormazd.’^ 

Such  conceptions  unmistakably  denote  man’s  in¬ 
stinctive  belief  in  a  supplementary  self,  fulfilling  the  Implica- 
inadequacies  of  the  known  self,  operating  in  a  freer 
sphere  than  that  to  which  he  feels  himself  restricted, 
and  enduring  beyond  the  limits  of  his  mortality. 

And  however  crude  and  absurd  their  content,  these 
beliefs  must  have  their  raison  d'etre  in  the  inner 
constitution  of  man’s  nature.  They  must  answer 
to  some  human  need,  and  it  is  no  far  inference  to 
find  that  need  in  man’s  keen  realization  of  the  mys¬ 
teriousness  of  his  own  manifest  being. 

Perhaps  the  psychical  significance  attached  to  the 
‘control’  self  is  best  shown  in  beliefs  about  inspira¬ 
tion.  In  primitive  conception  inspiration  is  a  god’s 
taking  hold  of  a  man’s  soul  for  the  purpose  of 
uplifting  and  magnifying  it:  to  give  it  vision,  in¬ 
sight,  ecstasy.  Even  so  low  a  race  as  the  Australian 
blacks  believe  in  the  divine  afflatus,  the  god  “sing¬ 
ing  in  the  breast”  of  sorcerer  and  poet,  and  the 
secret  of  nine-tenths  of  the  shamanism  and  witchery 
of  the  barbarians  is  their  reverent  belief  in  the 
actuality  of  spiritual  enlargement  when,  at  sacred 
intervals,  a  Nature  more  potent  than  man’s  makes 
his  life  its  epiphany.  The  Biblical  gifts  of  tongues 
and  prophecy,  the  ‘enthusiasm’  of  Orphics  and  Enthusiasm 
Dionysiacs,  the  trance-vision  of  the  Neo-Platonists, 
the  ecstasies  of  the  mystics — all  aver  the  same  fun¬ 
damental  faith,  found  in  all  ages  and  religions. 

Poetic  insight  is  the  most  universal  form  of  this 
experience.  All  men  have  their  seasons  of  poesy, 
and  though  the  imaginative  glow  come  but  rarely, 
there  is  in  it  an  unmistakable  conviction  of  a  higher 


18 


262 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Poetic 

pantheism 


Song  of 
Amergin 


power  than  any  the  will  commands.  Hence  man¬ 
kind  has  come  generally  to  believe  in  a  kind  of 
ulterior  validity  of  poetic  expression,  as  arising  from 
a  hidden  and  efficient  knowledge,  while  to  those 
gifted  in  poetic  power  a  ^genius,’  or  inspirational 
being,  is  ascribed,  which  the  possessors  themselves 
are  not  expected  to  understand. 

Citings  of  chapter  and  verse  in  the  case  of  such 
unanalyzable  phenomena  can  have  only  illustrative 
value;  yet  we  cannot  properly  estimate  the  biotic 
meaning  of  faith  in  inspiration  without  observation 
of  the  concrete  beliefs  in  which  it  issues.  And  of 
these,  for  our  purpose,  two  are  especially  instruc¬ 
tive.  The  one  is  poetic  pantheism — that  exuberant 
fullness  of  the  imagination  which  finds  naught  too 
paltry  or  too  awesome  to  be  alien  to  its  sympathies, 
which  defies,  or  perhaps  fails  to  conceive,  self¬ 
limitation,  and  is  capable  of  contentment  only  in 
swift  and  eager  appropriation,  all  Nature  in  its 
thrall.  This  poetic  pantheism,  though  found  in 
many  moods  and  expressed  in  many  literatures,  is 
above  all  typical  of  the  Celtic  bards.  In  the  oldest 
of  Irish  lyrics  Amergin  sings : 

I  am  the  wind  that  blows  upon  the  sea, 

I  am  the  ocean  wave. 

I  am  the  murmur  of  the  surges, 

I  am  seven  battalions, 

I  am  a  strong  bull, 

I  am  an  eagle  on  a  rock, 

I  am  a  ray  of  the  sun, 

I  am  the  most  beautiful  of  herbs, 

I  am  a  courageous  wild  boar, 

I  am  a  salmon  in  the  water, 

I  am  a  lake  upon  a  plain, 

I  am  a  cunning  artist, 

I  am  a  gigantic,  sword-wielding  champion, 

I  can  shift  my  shape  like  a  god. 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


263 


And  the  Cymric  Taliesin  proclaims: 

I  have  been  in  many  shapes  before  I  attained  a  congenial  Taliesin 
form.  I  have  been  a  narrow  blade  of  a  sword,  a  drop  in  the 
air,  a  word  in  a  book,  a  book  in  the  beginning,  a  light  in  a 
lantern,  a  boat  on  the  sea,  a  director  in  a  battle,  a  sword  in  the 
hand,  a  shield  in  fight,  the  string  of  a  harp ;  I  have  been  en¬ 
chanted  for  a  year  in  the  foam  of  water.  There  is  nothing 
which  I  have  not  been. 

So  also  Ossian  and  Anewin  and  Llywarch  Hen — 
in  each  the  same  buoyant  conviction  of  the  singer’s 
ubiquity,  the  same  indomitable  expansiveness  of 
soul.  If  we  find  a  flavor  of  magniloquence  in  this 
vasty  mood,  it  is  perhaps  because  the  mood  itself 
is  so  difficult  for  us,  educated  in  the  awe  of  the 
world,  to  achieve.  So  when  we  see  it  modernized 
in  Walt  Whitman  it  seems  like  a  kind  of  spiritual  Walt 
boastfulness — nothing  Pharasaical,  but  indecorus 
exaggeration.  There  is  something  presumptuous  in 
the  outspoken  assertion  of  man’s  universality;  it 
outleaps  our  common  sureties,  though  at  the  same 
time  it  responds  to  a  half-acknowledged  conviction 
that  the  inner  truth  of  human  nature  is  indeed 
transcendent  of  the  meagre  experience  humanly 
vouchsafed. 

At  once  in  contrast  and  in  harmony  with  poetic 
pantheism  is  a  second  poetic  belief,  belief  in  the 
soul’s  pre-existence.  It  contrasts  with  the  pantheism 
in  its  modesty  and  abashment,  its  sense  of  present 
limitation;  it  harmonizes  in  the  fact  that  it,  too,  is 
an  assertion  of  the  immemorial  nobility  of  man. 

Both  qualities,  the  sadness  and  the  exaltation,  Words- 
are  in  Wordsworth’s  Ode  on  Intimations  and  they 
are  in  Plato’s  account  of  him  who  beholding  an 
earthly  imitation  of  the  divine  Beauty  feels  “some 
misgiving  of  a  former  world  steal  over  him.”  But 


264 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Isles  of 
the  Dead 


Aztec 

fatalism 


the  mood  and  the  belief  are  not  characteristic  of 
reflective  civilization  only.  Doubtless  the  pantheism 
of  the  bards  was  a  development  of  the  older  Celtic 
notion  that  the  souls  of  men  are  come  from  the 
magic  western  Isles  thither  to  return  at  death,  or 
from  the  yet  more  primitive  belief  in  transmigra¬ 
tion  which  has  given  our  nursery  tales  their  shape- 
shifting  wizards  and  ogres  and  their  princesses 
horribly  enthralled  in  bestial  forms.  And  across 
the  sea  appears  the  essential  idea,  just  as  native  and 
instinctive,  among  those  natural  mystics,  the  Amer¬ 
ican  Indians.  Peruvian  tribes  conceived  that  souls 
issue,  will-o’-the-wisp-like,  from  a  marsh  and  will 
there  again  abide  after  death  until  born  anew  into 
bodily  life,  and  the  more  philosophical  Aztecs,  with 
a  bent  toward  fatalism,  taught  that  “no  one  of  those 
born  into  this  world  receives  his  lot  here  upon  earth ; 
rather  we  bring  it  with  us  in  being  born,  for  it  was 
assigned  to  us  before  the  beginning  of  the  world.” 
And  so  in  their  baptismal  rites  the  Aztecs  express 
their  faith  in  the  soul’s  high  nativity : 

Our  pitiful  lady,  Chalchiuhtlicue,  your  servant  here  present 
is  come  into  this  world,  hither  sent  by  our  father  and  mother, 
Ome-tecutli  and  Ome-ciuatl,  who  dwell  in  the  ninth  heaven.  We 
know  not  what  are  the  gifts  he  brings,  we  know  not  with 
what  he  has  been  assessed  from  before  the  beginnings  of  the 
world,  nor  with  what  fortune  he  comes  charged .  Be¬ 

hold  there  is  come  to  earth  this  little  child  who  is  descended 
whence  reside  the  supreme  gods  beyond  the  ninth  heaven  .  .  .  . 
sent  to  us  by  our  father  and  mother,  the  celestial  gods. 

In  all  such  beliefs  there  is  evident  an  instinctive 
effort  to  master  the  secret  of  that  genius  of  per¬ 
sonality  which  makes  the  individual  character  what 
it  is.  They  are  grounded  in  the  feeling  that  the  haps 
and  events  of  a  life’s  experience  are  inadequate  to 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


265 


explain  the  soul’s  possessions,  and  they  indicate,  as 
perhaps  nothing  else,  how  thoroughly  innate  is 
human  consciousness  of  an  inner,  unrevealed  self 
dominating  the  apparent  life.  Their  interest  is  not 
merely  that  they  are  beliefs  in  the  existence  of  a 
soul,  nor  yet  that  belief  in  a  soul  is  the  most  ready 
and  natural  account  of  his  own  nature  that  occurs 
to  man,  but  it  lies  far  more  in  the  fact  that  they 
are  interpretations  of  personality,  and  interpreta¬ 
tions  which  recognize  an  actuating  force  beneath 
the  current  fact  of  mind.  To  what  they  point  should 
be  plain.  I  cannot  repeat  too  often  that  the  mere 
existence  of  a  belief  requires  an  explanation,  and 
if  it  be  a  belief  that  has  served  a  large  purpose  in 
the  development  of  mind  it  cannot  but  represent 
some  sort  of  fundamental  truth  of  human  nature. 
It  must  have  a  ground  and  reason  adequate  to  its 
effects.  Otherwise  all  our  reasonings  would  be 
belied  and  all  our  science  be  worthless. 

In  final  characterization,  we  may  say  that  the 
force  implied  as  the  basis  of  human  personality 
must  have  at  least  the  countenance  of  design;  it 
achieves  a  consistent  and  harmonious  unity,  the 
individual  man’s  character,  and  this  our  highest 
intelligence  cannot  represent  except  as  involving  its 
own  supreme  trait — foresight.  Thus  reason  gives 
us  an  intelligent,  foreseeing  agent,  an  internal  will, 
as  the  only  conceivable  artificer  of  our  lives,  such 
as  we  find  them.  The  soul  (that  of  which  the  per¬ 
sonality  that  we  encounter  forms  the  living  expres¬ 
sion)  cannot  be  less  in  power  or  reason  than  the 
life  portrayed  and  if  our  common  belief  in  human 
potentiality  is  no  freakish  illusion  of  nature,  if  truth 
is  possible,  it  must  be  infinitely  more. 


Grounds 
of  belief 
in  souls 


Intelligence 
the  artificer 
of  life 


266 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


I 


Self- 

under¬ 

standing 


Greek 

drama 


Orestes 


The  mere  fact  that  this  conclusion  has  had  to  be 
sought  with  some  labor  ought  to  carry  the  correla¬ 
tive  that  self-understanding  is  attainable  only  within 
narrow  limits.  I  have  tried  to  show  why  it  is  that 
we  are  often  able  to  comprehend  another’s  character 
better  than  our  own,  as  being  without  the  present 
bias  that  self-judgment  involves;  we  may  be  aware 
of  possibilities  in  ourselves,  but  we  cannot  estimate 
them — perhaps  because  their  scope  has  in  it  some¬ 
thing  of  the  infinite. 

It  is  worth  while  to  note  that  here,  in  self-mis¬ 
understanding,  as  well  as  in  mutual  misunderstand¬ 
ings,  we  have  a  key  to  the  mood  of  tragedy.  The 
motive  is  perhaps  more  characteristic  of  Greek  than 
of  modern  drama,  for  the  Greek  drama  offered 
peculiar  facilities  for  its  objectification.  The  self 
was  divided  and  its  segments  separately  personified 
— ^the  human,  ostensible  self  as  the  hapless  mortal, 
the  hidden,  spiritual  self  as  the  regnant  god 
or  Nemesis  implacable.  The  soul’s  unsuspected 
motives  and  impulses,  with  their  tendency  to  seize 
the  reins  and  drive  to  madness,  were  so  suited  to 
portrayal  as  divine  powers  that  even  we,  long  dead 
to  paganism,  cannot  fail  of  their  awful  realism. 
It  is  thus  that  Orestes  is  pursued  by  the  snaky-armed 
Erinyes,  Cimmerian  shades  of  the  social  and  reli¬ 
gious  instincts  of  his  ancestors  sprung  up  within 
him;  it  is  thus  that  Philoctetes  finds  his  sophistic 
Greek  self  in  the  absurd  guise  of  Heracles,  downing 
manhood  and  vengeance  for  politics  and  prosperity; 
it  is  thus,  again,  that  lawless  Aphrodite,  the  acf)po(Tvvrj 
of  every  woman’s  nature,  lays  hold  on  and  piteously 
sacrifices  Phaedra  despite  her  desperate  insight  and 
vain  strife. 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


267 


In  Phaedra  the  subtlety  of  Euripides  allows  her 
conscious  self  to  see  uncloudedly  the  dread  leading 
of  the  inner  will  which  yet  she  is  unable  to  evade. 
She  is  a  victim  of  fissured  personality:  on  the  one 
side  her  understanding,  her  social  instincts,  her  rea¬ 
son  crystal  clear,  all  helpless  and  hopeless;  on  the 
other  the  indomitable  urgency  of  the  dark  goddess 
within.  The  source  of  Phaedra’s  wisdom — wisdom 
void  of  aid — is  her  quick  sensitivity  to  the  unseen 
influence.  She  is  keenly  aware  of  the  counter-self 
working  her  doom  and  she  struggles  desperately 
against  the  passion  it  incites.  The  enigma  of  human 
nature  is  presented  for  her  solution;  its  issue  is  life 
or  death ;  and  she,  realizing  all,  attempts  it  and  fails. 
Her  tragedy  is  doubly  tragic  by  reason  of  her  fore¬ 
sight.  It  is  doubly  tragic  because  doubly  human, 
for  foresight,  intelligence,  is  pre-eminently  the  man- 
distinctive  trait,  and  we  have  not  yet  reached  a 
breadth  of  sympathy  where  the  heart  is  not  quicker 
in  its  susceptibility  to  human  suffering  than  to  any 
other. 

Even  the  morally  blind,  at  the  supreme  moment, 
must  have  his  instant  of  clairvoyance,  of  humanity, 
if  his  death  is  to  be  truly  tragical.  So  Webster 
makes  Bosola  not  too  black  a  villain  to  die  wisely 
aware  of  his  own  lost  possibilities : 

O,  I  am  gone! 

We  are  only  like  dead  walls  or  vaulted  graves, 

That,  ruined,  yield  no  echo.  Fare  you  well. 

It  may  be  pain,  but  no  harm,  for  me  to  die 
In  so  good  a  quarrel.  O,  this  gloomy  world! 

In  what  shadow,  or  deep  pit  of  darkness, 

Doth  womanish  and  fearful  mankind  live  I 
Let  worthy  minds  ne’er  stagger  in  distrust 
To  suffer  death  or  shame  for  what  is  just: 

Mine  is  another  voyage. 


Phaedra 


Duchess 
of  Malfy 


268 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Hamlet 
and  Lear 


The  heart 
of  tragedy 


Were  Bosola  the  mere  unenlightened  murderer,  one 
could  have  no  more  than  a  gallows-curiosity  in  his 
taking  off ;  but  when  his  man’s  soul  comes  to  the 
surface,  though  but  for  a  moment,  we  feel  the  tragic 
awe  of  death. 

I  think  that  the  reason  that  the  tragedy  of  Ham¬ 
let  seems  more  noble  than  the  far  more  terrible  and 
pathetic  tragedy  of  Lear  lies  in  this  self-same  source ; 
Lear’s  impulses  and  emotions  are  of  an  elemental 
and  instinctive  kind,  the  kind  we  call  ‘natural’  and 
share  with  the  lower  animals;  Hamlet’s  intensest 
living  is  in  his  reflective  consciousness,  the  supreme 
badge  of  the  human  estate.  Nor  am  I  sure  that  the 
tremendous  appeal  of  the  Christ-life  to  mankind  is 
not  greatly  due  to  the  preternatural,  the  divine  fore¬ 
sight  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows. 

Enlightenment,  then,  is  at  the  heart  of  tragedy. 
It  is  man’s  consciousness  of  his  coming  end,  not  the 
pain  that  he  suffers,  that  makes  human  death  more 
terrible  than  that  of  the  brute.  This  consciousness 
implies  in  him  a  power  of  conceptional  creation — 
the  thinking  that  his  life  might  continue,  might  yet 
alter  the  world  in  ways  which  death  forestays — that 
is  distinctive  of  his  spiritual  nature  and  so  far  as 
we  know  is  a  fact  anomalous  in  Nature.  If  death 
indeed  were  all,  it  would  seem  as  though  Nature 
should  have  provided  that  no  man  could  conceive 
the  order  of  the  world  to  be  such  that  he  should 
not  die  when  and  as  the  fact  eventuates;  he  should 
be  satisfied  with  his  life’s  end,  knowing  no  other 
possibility  and  dreaming  no  will  save  the  natural 
law.  This,  I  say,  should  be  if  man’s  aspiration  for 
a  bettered  and  bettering  existence  be  meaningless  in 
Nature’s  plan;  but  if  the  evolution  of  human  con- 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


269 


sciousness  is  a  factor  of  the  world’s  rationality  and 
essential  constitution,  then  must  this  aspiration  be 
of  real  significance  and  find  a  real  satisfaction  in 
the  order  of  Nature. 

Probably  the  most  elusive  and  certainly  the  most 
indescribable  of  all  human  experiences  are  those 
tensions  of  consciousness  wherein  one  is  beset  with 
the  sense  of  an  encompassing  ‘other-world,’  nearer 
than  sight  or  touch  yet  passing  man’s  powers  to 
enter  in.  Often  there  is  the  poignant  realization  of 
its  nearness,  yearnings  for  its  glories  and  quietings, 
as  one  yearns  for  the  glory  and  quiet  of  the  still, 
bright  stars.  And  there  is  eager  anticipation,  as 
for  the  fulfillment  of  ancient  Messianic  prophecies, 
and  there  is  pride  of  .  kingly  power — the  new- 
crowned  monarch  entering  in  triumph  into  his  heri¬ 
tage.  Yet  ever,  even  on  the  verge,  the  keys  of  all 
mysteries  in  hand,  in  the  ache  of  present  wonder, 
in  the  awe  of  revelation,  there  comes  the  dumb- 
deadening  pain,  the  helpless  swing  back  to  the  world 
of  matter-of-fact.  And  the  heart  is  as  the  heart 
of  the  prodigal  turned  from  the  ancient  door,  and 
life  becomes  one  long  Wanderjahr  wherethrough 
the  exile  takes  his  wistful  way  in  ceaseless  search 
of  the  lost  portal  to  his  kingdom. 

“I  have  been  in  many  shapes,”  sings  Taliesin, 
“before  I  attained  a  congenial  form.”  And  we — 
are  we  not  beset  with  strange  familiarities,  with 
misty  recollections,  with  recognitions  which  yet  are 
dreams,  with  unpremeditated  knowings  and  un¬ 
remembered  wisdoms,  presages  and  prophecies 
whose  fulfillments  betray  the  unguessed  archetypes 
of  our  lives?  There  is  a  richness  and  power  and 
majesty  in  the  world  which  unseeing  we  feel  and 


Other- 

world 

conscious¬ 

ness 


Anamnesis 


270 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Body 
and  mind 


Death 


untaught  we  know,  and  our  only  clues  to  the  source 
of  this  assurance  are  those  moments  of  promise 
when  we  divine  something  of  the  marvel  of  that 
spiritual  vision  whose  revealed  glory  is  yet  denied 
us  for  these  mortal  days. 

VI 

And  now  I  must  digress  to  what  is  certainly  the 
most  difficult  puzzle  known  to  man — the  problem 
of  the  relation  of  body  and  mind.  The  intimacy 
of  the  physical  and  the  spiritual  in  the  life  we  know 
is  such  that  it  is  very  difficult  for  us  to  separate  them 
even  in  conception,  and  the  fact  of  this  intimacy  is 
the  most  ordinary  and  cogent  obstacle  to  belief  in 
a  spiritual  survival  of  bodily  death.  That  the  inner 
nature  of  the  body-mind  relation  can  ever  be  laid 
bare  to  human  understanding  is  far  from  probable : 
the  phenomenon  is  too  close  to  the  life-principle. 
But  it  is  not  altogether  chimerical  to  expect  light 
on  the  less  transcendental,  though  to  us  far  more 
significant  question  of  the  body-dependence  or  -in¬ 
dependence  of  the  spirit.  Indeed,  the  progress  of 
science  is  such  that  we  are  already  in  possession  of 
many  of  the  essential  truths. 

Death  derives  a  certain  spectacular  quality  from 
the  soul-bereft  body  which  is  its  outward  token  and 
bequeathment ;  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  it 
was  the  presence  of  the  corpse  and  the  need  for  its 
disposal  which  first  impressed  upon  the  dawning 
human  intelligence  the  mysteriousness  of  man’s 
constitution.  Animals  view  the  dead  of  their  kind 
with  indifference,  curiosity,  or  revulsive  terror,  but 
man,  from  an  immemorial  antiquity,  has  resorted 
to  the  most  laborious  devices  for  the  preservation 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


271 


and  honoring  of  the  bodies  of  his  fellows.  Tombs 
are  the  most  ancient  of  human  edifices,  and  sepulture 
is  by  far  the  most  significant  of  all  primitive  human 
customs.  The  practice  of  sepulture  implies  a  crea¬ 
ture  gifted  with  reflection  and  capable  of  some  ideal 
analysis  of  his  own  nature — one  who  has  come  to 
recognize  in  the  bodily  husk  the  terribleness  of  its 
fall,  and,  in  order  to  supply  the  loss,  dimly  re-creates 
for  it  an  animating  soul. 

To  be  sure,  man  is  slow  in  dissociating  the  spirit 
from  its  bodily  dependence;  the  conception  of  a 
disembodied  life  is  at  first  beyond  his  powers.  The 
hutless  Australian  black  bearing  with  him  in  his 
wanderings  the  bones  of  his  kindred,  sometimes  for 
years,  and  the  cultured  Egyptian  garlanding  the  an¬ 
cestral  mummies  at  his  feasts,  alike  show  this  primi¬ 
tive  inability,  while  the  mere  fact  of  sepulture  be¬ 
trays  at  least  a  belief  in  the  eventual  restoration  of 
the  communion  of  soul  and  body.  But  though  the 
spiritual  and  material  be  thus  blurred  in  conception, 
in  instinct  there  is  none  the  less  profoundly  dis¬ 
cerned  the  fact  that  the  human  reality  includes  a 
life,  a  person,  which  gives  significance  to  the  body 
rather  than  derives  meaning  from  it.  And  herein 
is  already  forecast  the  idea  of  spiritual  being. 

The  evolution  of  this  idea  shows,  pari  passu,  the 
slow  coming  into  consciousness  of  the  problem  of 
body  and  mind.  The  primary  contrast  of  living 
body  and  corpse  is  one  that  seems  to  call  for  crude 
subtraction,  and  it  is  only  natural  that  the  earliest 
attempts  yield  a  conception  of  the  soul,  or  dife,’ 
that  is  purely  physical.  Thus  we  have  the  elemen¬ 
tary  identification  of  the  soul  with  the  blood, — that 
blood  which  yet  in  Homeric  thought  must  be  lapped 


Sepulture 


Corpse 

and 

Mummy 


272 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Breath 
of  life 


Idolon 


Ghost 


by  the  meagre  ghosts  ere  they  can  find  strength  and 
speech,  and  which  with  us  today  is  still  the  ‘life 
blood.’  Or  again,  the  soul  is  the  breath,  the  ‘breath 
of  life’  TTvev/xa,  spivitus,  anima)^  which  the 

Romans  deemed  it  a  sacred  duty  to  catch  with  their 
lips  from  the  lips  of  a  dying  kinsman;  or  it  is  the 
not  less  physical  shadow,  the  ‘shade’  umbra), 

the  possession  of  which  marked  Dante  in  Purgatory 
as  a  living  man  among  the  dead. 

From  conceptions  such  as  these  the  transition  is 
imperceptible  to  the  notion,  most  widespread  of  all, 
that  the  soul  is  a  sort  of  unsubstantial  replica  of  the 
body  (etScoAov,  simulacrum),  usually  a  miniature,  a 
manikin.  Yet  this  transition  marks  a  clearer  realiza¬ 
tion  of  the  soul’s  relation  to  the  body;  the  soul  is 
no  longer  an  attribute,  but  a  double  of  the  physical 
self,  to  which  it  is  united  by  the  magic  bond  of  re¬ 
semblance,  so  that  what  the  soul  suffers,  the  body 
suffers,  what  mutilates  the  body,  mutilates  the  soul. 
Among  the  ghosts  that  flocked  about  the  trench 
where  Odysseus  ran  the  blood  of  the  sacrificed  ram 
were  phantoms  of  “battle-slain  men,  wounded  by 
brazen  spears,  girt  in  their  bloody  mail” ;  the  ghosts 
of  our  own  time  go  clanking  with  them  the  dismal 
symbols  of  their  taking  off,  each  in  the  crippled, 
bloody  or  headless  plight  which  marked  his  body’s 
last  estate;  and  there  is  a  pathetic  story  of  the  West 
Indies  that  when  the  slaves  began  to  resort  to  suicide 
to  escape  their  miseries,  the  masters  mutilated  the 
dead  bodies,  thus,  through  fear  of  a  mutilated  life 
in  the  world  to  come,  stalling  the  survivors  from 
imitating  their  comrades. 

Thus  the  distinction  of  soul  and  body  began  to 
be  felt, — their  relation  being  explained,  as  were  all 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


273 


natural  reactions,  by  the  magic  of  mimicry.  But 
as  yet  there  was  little  notion  of  spiritual  agency; 
the  physical  force  of  the  living  body  was  the  only 
agency  primarily  appreciated  and  this  was  not  ana¬ 
lyzed.  It  was  the  fact  of  death  that  first  determined 
the  conception  of  the  soul,  whose  being  was  accord¬ 
ingly  framed  wan  and  feeble  as  the  proper  com¬ 
plement  of  the  nerveless  body.  Hence  Homer’s 
description  of  the  dwellers  in  Hades,  etSwAa  Hades 
KafjLovTMv,  “eidola  of  outworn  men” ;  and  hence, 
doubtless,  the  odd  attitude  of  the  living  man  toward 
his  own  soul — as  if  ’twere  somewhat  half  foreign, 
a  mere  baggage,  a  hanger-on,  a  nurseling  of  his 
body, — an  attitude  which  may  in  part  explain  the 
common  belief  in  the  diminutiveness  of  the  soul, 
and  which  finds  an  almost  ludicrous  expression  in 
the  patronizing  address  of  the  dying  Hadrian  to 
his  own  spirit: 

Animula  vagula,  blandula, 

hospes  comesque  corporis,  Hadrian 

quae  nunc  abibis  in  loca  to  his  soul 

pallidula,  rigida,  nudula, 
nec,  ut  soles,  dabis  jocos? 

To  philosophers,  and  before  all  to  Plato  whose 
influence  in  the  conception  is  still  potent,  we  must 
turn  for  a  realization  of  the  meaning,  power,  and 
individuality  of  spiritual  agency.  Plato’s  theory 
possesses  striking  analogy  to  the  primitive  notion 
of  mimicry  as  causal  force.  He  believed  the  soul 
to  be  an  Idea  or  mode  of  the  Divine  Mind  which 
operates,  as  all  Ideas,  by  inspiring  in  brute  physical 
being  the  desire  and  emulation  of  its  divine  perfec¬ 
tions  :  the  body  imitates  so  far  as  its  mortal  nature 
permits  the  beauties  of  its  spiritual  pattern.  In  this 


274 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  body 
an  image 


Descartes 
on  the  soul 


view  there  is  a  startling  truth  to  the  facts  of  life — 
volition  being  so  largely  a  matter  of  the  physical 
exercise,  its  end  and  designings  so  entirely  ideal, — 
and  it  is  therefore  of  little  wonder  that  it  so  long 
satisfied  the  requirements  of  growing  reflection. 
Indeed,  its  truth  stands  today  an  essential  truth  of 
human  nature.  At  the  same  time,  for  a  way  of 
thinking  conditioned  by  mechanical  conceptions,  it 
gives  a  too  mythical  account  of  the  modm  operandi: 
it  does  not  fit  in  with  the  common  notions  of  causa¬ 
tion,  and  it  leaves  the  critical  intelligence  still  rest¬ 
less  as  to  how  soul  and  body,  mutually  independent, 
can  interoperate. 

The  question  has  never  really  been  answered  ex¬ 
cept  by  metaphors.  The  body  is  the  Touse  of  clay,’ 
the  'tenement,’  of  the  soul,  or,  in  the  less  felt  figure 
of  our  physiologies,  the  brain  is  the  ‘seat’  of  our 
consciousness.  Even  Descartes’  famous  theory,  that 
the  soul  is  a  dimensionless  entity  stationed  in  the 
pineal  gland  by  the  infinitesimal  motions  of  which 
it  deflects  the  animal  spirits  this  way  and  that,  is 
but  a  variant  of  this  figure  of  the  'seat,’  which,  on 
the  whole,  is  more  satisfying  to  the  modern  mind 
than  the  competitive  simile,  that  the  "brain  secretes 
consciousness  as  the  liver  secretes  bile,”  or  that  con¬ 
sciousness  is  an  'epiphenomenon’  of  the  body. 

Yet,  though  they  explain  nothing,  there  is  a  cer¬ 
tain  gain  in  these  metaphors.  They  narrow  the 
problem  and  give  more  explicit  terms.  With  'soul,’ 
or  'mind,’  and  'body’  it  is  hard  to  avoid  playing 
fast  and  loose;  with  'brain’  and  'consciousness’ 
we  must  at  least  be  aware  when  we  are  offering 
and  when  avoiding  a  solution.  So  far  as  actual 
knowledge  of  the  inner  relation  of  body  and  mind 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


275 


is  concerned  we  are  no  whit  beyond  Empedocles 
who  held  that  objects  give  off  effluvia  which  pass 
through  the  organs  of  sense  and  impress  themselves 
upon  the  soul,  but  we  are  very  far  beyond  this  in 
our  understanding  of  the  issues  involved;  we  have 
rid  ourselves  of  distressing  ambiguities  and  drawn 
a  clear  line  between  causal  fact  and  thought  con¬ 
vention. 

The  whole  science  of  physiological  psychology 
rests  on  the  generalization  that  every  alteration  of 
consciousness  is  the  direct  accompaniment  of  brain 
activity,  but  it  makes  no  pretense  of  explaining  these 
mutual  changes.  Affirmation  of  the  parallelism  of 
mind  and  brain  events  is  in  no  wise  affirmation  of 
their  identity  nor  even  of  their  causal  dependence. 
To  say  that  a  salt  whiff  of  the  sea  accompanies  a 
tremor  of  olfactory  nerve-cells  is  not  to  pronounce 
as  same  what  our  words  discriminate :  the  sensation 
is  one  thing,  the  nerve-change  another;  and  could 
we  (as  it  seems  eminently  plausible  that  some  day 
we  may)  match  every  distinguishable  conscious 
state  with  a  parallel  brain  state,  the  sum  of  the 
brain-states  could  be  no  more  than  a  vastly  interest¬ 
ing  symbolism  of  the  mind.  It  would  form  a  kind 
of  chart  or  algebra  of  mental  history  and  it  would 
have  the  same  sort  of  value  that  any  accurate  chart 
or  competent  formula  possesses.  Certainly  it  would 
be  keenly  useful — provided  we  command  the  proper 
stimulus — to  know  that  whenever  neuron  tingles 
neuron  y  a  prick  o’  the  conscience  must  rouse  to 
right  action ;  but  we  cannot  dream,  thereby,  to  have 
hit  upon  a  ground  for  defining  the  nerve-change  as 
a  form  of  compunction  (which  is  what  a  mate¬ 
rialistic  view  necessitates).  What  we  have  ground 


Empedocles 


Physiologi¬ 

cal 

psychology 


276 


MATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Fallacies 
of  psy¬ 
chologists 


for  saying  is  that  here  is  a  mechanism,  the  human 
body,  of  enormous  importance  to  conscious  life, 
and  bearing  such  unique  relationship  to  the  man- 
side  of  the  world  that,  could  we  grasp  it,  the  clue 
to  man’s  destiny  would  be  in  our  hands. 

It  is  possible  that  the  solution  is  of  unsuspected 
simplicity.  We  need  first  to  rid  ourselves  of  awk¬ 
ward  prepossessions:  we  must  fix  firmly  in  mind 
that  the  psychologist’s  parallelistic  scheme  is  only 
a  comfortable  convention  of  his,  enabling  him  to 
dodge  a  perplexity  which,  interesting  as  it  may  be 
to  us,  is  of  little  moment  to  his  pursuits  and  pur¬ 
poses.  The  psychologist  carefully  equating  brain- 
state  and  conscious-state  is  equating  real  and  fictive 
fact :  the  brain-state  of  X,  which  we  will  suppose 
he  is  able  to  examine,  is  something  he  directly  sees; 
X’s  thought,  which  he  parallels  with  the  brain-state, 
is  something  he  imagines  only.  X’s  mind  is  to  the 
psychologist  what  any  man’s  mind  must  be  to  any 
other  man,  an  ideal  construction,  an  imaginary  por¬ 
trait,  a  fiction  of  X’s  experience.  And  it  is  not  by 
analysis  of  such  a  fictive  mind  but  by  analysis  of 
a  real  mind — say,  the  psychologist’s  own — that  the 
mind’s  true  nature  is  to  be  ascertained.  We  may 
learn  something  of  the  human  body  by  study  of 
manikins  and  charts,  but  for  the  final  fact  we  must 
resort  to  flesh  and  bone;  and  so  it  is  with  mind. 

The  real  conditions  of  our  quest  are  hidden  as 
much  as  revealed  by  our  terminology.  ‘Conscious¬ 
ness’  we  treat  as  if  it  were  a  thing  among  things 
rather  than  a  name  for  things  collectively  in  their 
felt  relations  to  ourselves.  Perception  of  a  physical 
object  we  term  a  ‘state  of  consciousness.’  We  might 
better  say  that  it  is  an  ‘object-consciousness’ — an 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


277 


apple-consciousness,  a  chair-consciousness — and  that 
as  a  fact  of  our  individual  history  the  thing  has  no 
existence  except  as  perceived-object.  In  other  words 
what  we  feel  as  reality  is  the  mass  or  series  of  our 
perceptions.  But  what  we  call  truth  or  true  nature 
is  usually  something  very  different;  for  us  it  is 
something  wholly  ideal,  for  it  is  the  result  of  our 
taking  thought  upon  perception  and  consciously  or 
unconsciously  infilling  it  with  the  products  of  our 
thinking— as  the  truth  of  the  tree  is  the  complex 
of  its  image  and  our  botanical  education. 

Consciousness,  then,  is  but  a  name  for  a  certain  Consdous- 
aspect  of  experience,  the  reality  or  real-seeming  defined 
aspect.  What  we  call  ‘thing’  is  in  full  ‘thing-con- 
sciousness’ ;  what  we  call  a  ‘truth’  is  ‘thought- 
consciousness’  or  ‘idea.’  Things  we  recognize  as 
making  up  the  substance  of  our  actual  world;  truths 
are  vicarious  things,  symbols  of  actualities  we  do 
not  directly  know.  If  we  are  to  be  true  to  expe¬ 
rience  we  must  get  rid  of  the  notion  that  ‘conscious’ 
and  ‘bodily’  represent  the  same  sort  of  duality  as 
‘physical’  and  ‘spiritual.’  Conscious  experience  em¬ 
braces  both  physical  and  spiritual  elements  and  with 
the  same  sort  of  immediacy,  and  our  only  interest 
is  to  inquire  whether  the  spiritual  elements  give  a 
greater  promise  of  permanency  than  the  physical. 

I  think  the  point  may  be  brought  home  by  con¬ 
sidering  a  single  member  of  the  body,  say  the  hand. 

One’s  hand  at  rest  upon  the  chair-arm  seems  curi-  One’s  hand 
ously  disjunct  from  the  self:  its  contact  with  the 
cool  wood  is  impersonal  and  objective,  in  fact  it  is 
almost  as  much  a  part  of  the  not-self  world  as  is 
the  wood;  like  the  kitten’s  tail,  the  intimacy  of  its 
peculiar  attachment  to  one’s  experience  is  only  dis- 


V 


278  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  “seat” 
of  con¬ 
sciousness 


Nature’s 

economies 


tantly  felt.  But  quite  different  is  the  same  hand  in 
action.  The  active  hand  is  a  consciously  directed 
tool.  It  is  become  a  part  of  one’s  self  in  a  more 
cordial  relation;  though  yet  not  essential  to  one’s 
sense  of  being,  it  is  distinctly  a  part  of  one’s  con¬ 
tact  with  objects — sharing  their  qualities  through 
touch,  and,  through  muscular  effort,  imparting  new 
qualities.  The  active  hand  is  a  tool  or  agent  of 
one’s  intention;  it  is  that  part  of  reality  where 
change  is  actually  being  wrought  in  the  carrying 
out  of  this  intention. 

The  italics  give  the  important  point:  we  have 
body-consciousness  where  change  is  being  wrought 
— either  actively,  when  we  mould  environment,  or 
passively,  when  environment  impresses  itself  upon 
us.  We  have  body-consciousness,  to  put  the  case 
otherwise,  just  where  we  should  expect  from  bio¬ 
physical  reasons  to  find  it,  where  its  warnings  and 
directions  should  be  of  most  avail.  Commonly  we 
have  but  a  vague  apprehension  of  the  body  as  a 
whole;  two  or  three  centers  of  friction  are  about 
all  that  we  can  heed  at  once.  But  for  physical  pur¬ 
poses — bodily  preservation,  nourishment,  propul¬ 
sion — these  are  all  that  are  necessary.  Nature  has 
accommodatingly  specialized  certain  portions  of  the 
physical  mechanism,  the  sense-organs,  for  the  sole 
sake  of  keeping  us  in  touch  with  reality  at  the  salient 
frictive  points.  The  outparts  of  the  machine  are 
the  only  parts  of  which  we  need  to  be  actively 
conscious  for  practical  guidance,  and  but  for  occa¬ 
sional  danger  signals  we  are  left  comfortably  oblivi¬ 
ous  of  the  automatic  inner  mechanism. 

I  give  this  commonplace  with  emphasis  because 
it  seems  to  answer  directly  the  otherwise  natural 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


279 


question  of  why  we  have  not  consciousness  of  the  ^ody 
intra-bodily  mechanism.  The  body  as  a  whole  ^  machine 
works  automatically;  it  is  a  perfect  machine  and 
there  is  no  need  for  consciousness  of  its  operations 
except  at  those  points  where  adaptation  involves 
choice,  where  it  might  go  wrong  but  for  the  control 
of  reason.  Our  physical  organisms  act  physically 
upon  a  physical  world,  altering  and  being  altered  by 
that  world.  They  produce  and  reflect  a  current  phys¬ 
ical  personality,  the  visible,  substantial  man,  the  man 
who  wears  clothes  and  can  be  photographed.  There 
is  every  reason,  biologically  speaking,  why,  if  the 
physical  body  is  to  be  (what  in  fact  it  is)  a  real 
agency  in  the  world,  its  conscious  control  should 
be  concentrated  upon  its  direct  contacts  with  en¬ 
vironment,  its  handlings,  seeings,  hearings.  There 
is  no  biological  reason  why  its  internal  processes 
should  be  other  than  automatic  and  unconscious. 

Body-consciousness,  then,  is  the  immediate  token 
of  man’s  independent  physical  action,  or,  otherwise 
put,  the  body  is  the  tool  of  the  evolving  mind.  So 
far  as  any  individual  is  concerned,  his  own  body 
has  no  existence  or  meaning  except  as  the  instru¬ 
ment  or  center  of  his  contacts  with  Nature — that 
is,  with  what  he  feels  to  be  other  than  himself; 
his  body  exists  for  him  merely  as  the  form  through 
which  he  must  realize  (to  the  extent  permitted) 
that  inner  design  or  life-unity  which  he  feels  to  be 
his  raison  d'etre  and  vaguely  terms  his  Tetter  self.’ 

As  for  another’s  body,  this  exists,  first,  as  one 
among  the  physical  facts  which  make  up  the  con- 
tactual-  or  thing-consciousness  of  the  individual; 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  a  perception-fact,  significant  just 
as  being  perceived;  and  it  exists,  secondly,  as  the 


280 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Evolution 
of  body 
and  mind 


Sufficient 
reason  of 
conscious¬ 
ness 


outer  expression  and  vehicle  of  a  personality  ideally 
symbolized  under  the  spur  of  imaginative  insight: 
even  under  the  forceps  and  scalpel  of  the  dissector 
the  body  is  nothing  except  it  be  the  presentment 
of  an  ideal  physical  nature  or  the  symbol  of  a 
human  consciousness.  However  it  be  considered, 
the  body  represents  a  purpose  to  which  mind  is 
the  key. 

In  turning  to  natural  evolution  for  an  explanation 
of  this  purposiveness  of  conscious  being,  we  are 
giving  up  immediate  experience  for  inference.  The 
evolution  of  body  and  mind  is  an  historical,  hence 
an  inferred  fact.  It  is  based  upon  critical  judg¬ 
ments  of  evidence  and  its  final  test  must  be  the 
rationality  which  we  feel  our  inferences  to  possess. 
I  preface  thus  that  the  reader  may  take  me  as  under¬ 
standing  that  what  I  offer  by  way  of  reason  is  mere 
hypothesis,  supported  by  evidence  to  be  sure,  but 
no  proven  case. 

The  body,  then,  is  a  naturally  evolved  machine. 
But  mere  mechanism  (as  heretofore  urged)  is  a 
partial  and  irrational  conception  having  in  it  some¬ 
thing  of  the  monstrous;  mechanism  has  meaning 
only  in  connection  with  a  use  or  purpose  of  the 
machine.  The  body-machine  in  the  order  of  Nature 
is  unthinkable  as  not  working  to  some  end;  that  is, 
we  must  find  some  rational  satisfaction  in  the  con¬ 
templation  of  the  body’s  work,  and  this  (may  we 
not  affirm  it?)  can  only  lie  in  the  manifest  trend 
of  that  work  the  immediate  exemplification  of  which 
is  consciousness  while  its  ideal  design  is  the  wrought 
personality. 

That  immediate  consciousness  should  comprise  so 
much  clutter  and  flurry  and  work-a-day  weariness. 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


281 


SO  little  of  the  ideally  satisfying,  may  at  first  view 
seem  a  denial  of  any  ideal  end;  but  against  such 
haste  we  should  reflect  that  Nature  has  endless  time 
to  work  her  will  and  again  that  our  bodily  life  must 
needs  be  fitted  to  its  environmental  necessities.  Why 
we  may  not  know,  but  physical  reactions,  pains  and 
pleasures  alike,  are  the  telling  factors  of  our  present 
discipline.  And  while  we  are  living  the  life  of 
Nature  it  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  meaning  of 
a  complicated  and  lasting  life-scheme  can  be  con¬ 
tinuously  present  in  its  moments. 

The  wonder  is,  perhaps,  that  we  have  so  much 
insight  into  the  ideal  character  of  the  world,  into 
what  we  term  its  truth.  If  Nature  be  viewed  as 
an  agency  for  the  development  of  ideal  types,  of 
which  the  human  is  one,  it  cannot  be  expected  that 
the  developing  creature  should  know  its  destined 
end  from  the  beginning  nor  that  its  consciousness 
should  develop  through  other  than  immediate  needs. 
It  is  only  by  slow  gains  that  a  little  ideal  insight 
is  achieved,  the  hard-won  privilege  of  aeons  of  blind 
endeavor. 

But  if  the  body  thus  incarnates  a  life  which  in¬ 
definitely  transcends  its  present  show,  it  yet  remains 
to  ask  whether  the  transcendent  life  may  have  other 
incarnations  than  this  by  which  we  know  ourselves  ? 
whether  there  can  be  experience  apart  from  brain- 
mechanism?  and  whether  it  can  include  a  sense  of 
personality? 

The  question  has  been  implicitly  answered  in  our 
estimate  of  the  function  of  the  body  and  the  nature 
of  bodily  consciousness.  The  body  is  the  physical 
locus  of  the  human  person,  evolved  as  the  instru¬ 
ment  and  expression  of  his  conscious  life.  This 


Human 

experience 

and 

Nature’s 

ends 


282 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Apparent 

motive 

and 

abiding 

experience 


life,  in  so  far  as  it  is  sensible  merely,  is  utterly  bound 
down  to  bodily  limitations;  it  is  local,  restricted, 
evanescent.  But  consciousness  is  not  merely  body¬ 
conscious;  it  is  not  limited  to  sense  elements.  It 
embraces  along  with  this — possibly  as  a  kind  of 
refinement  of  the  sensible  elements — certain  ideal 
elements  whose  whole  point  is  their  transcendence 
of  present  bodily  needs  and  informations.  They 
represent  the  plan  and  scheme  of  an  understanding, 
and  the  apparent  motive,  in  the  order  of  Nature, 
of  the  discipline  which  we  call  human  life. 

The  burden  of  my  previous  discussion  has  been 
to  show  that  this  apparent  motive  accounts  for  itself 
as  reference  to  a  more  abiding,  fervid,  and  opulent 
experience  than  that  of  which  we  commonly  have 
conscious  token.  This  hidden  experience  is  what 
builds  up  personality,  and  more  and  more,  as  evolu¬ 
tion  advances,  replaces  bodily  by  ideal  manifestation. 
In  its  inner  character,  it  not  only  is  independent  of 
the  body,  but  it  is  antagonistic  to  body-consciousness 
and  tends  to  usurp  its  place. 

An  experience  apart  from  the  body  is  thus  neces¬ 
sary  to  explain  experience  of  the  body;  and  it  exists, 
in  fact,  in  what  is  commonly  called  subconscious 
experience.  But  its  evolutional  trend  is  toward  an 
ever  fuller  conscious  manifestation,  toward  an  ever 
fuller  conveyance  of  a  sense  of  personality,  or  self- 
realization.  Even  within  experience  as  we  know  it 
there  are  rare  elements,  ideal  elements,  or  mystical, 
if  you  will,  which  are  utterly  irrelevant  to  the 
physical  world,  and,  so  far  as  we  can  judge,  depen¬ 
dent  only  upon  the  secret  nature  of  personality.  It 
is  surely  not  borrowing  privilege  to  regard  such 
experiences  as  prophetic  of  an  estate  wherein  the 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


283 


curbed  instincts  of  the  spirit  shall  have  freer  rein 
than  mortal  circumstance  allows. 

The  universe,  as  reason  builds  it,  is  an  edifice  of 
possibilities;  Nature  is  a  moulder  of  ends.  For  our-  Teleology 
selves,  the  only  foundation  of  rationality  must  lie 
in  what  we  may  grasp  of  Nature’s  purpose  in  creat¬ 
ing  us.  This,  if  it  is  shown  anywhere,  is  shown  in 
our  ever-present  sense  of  evolution  and  aspiration, — 
in  our  dissatisfactions,  to  put  it  contrarily.  We  live 
unceasingly  for  the  future,  be  it  the  coming  moment, 
month  or  year.  So  Nature  has  compelled. 

There  is  but  one  inference  to  be  drawn  from  these 
considerations :  either  the  incompleteness  of  our 
mortal,  fragmentary  life  must  have  for  its  satisfac¬ 
tion  a  future  answering  to  our  aspirations,  either 
this  or  man’s  reason  is  but  a  horrible  leprosy  of  the 
mind.  Between  spiritual  evolution  and  cosmic  mad¬ 
ness  there  is  no  middle  ground.  On  the  one  rest  all 
truth  and  faith ;  with  the  other  is  only  delirium  and 
chaos. 

In  turning  from  this  theme  it  may  be  noted  that  The 
the  view  expressed  has  a  bearing  upon  the  incarna-  I^^carnatic 
tion  of  Christ.  It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  see  in  the 
life  of  Jesus,  if  he  be  conceived  as  always  fully  con¬ 
scious  of  his  divinity,  the  same  utter  nobility  which 
would  be  were  his  consciousness  merely  human :  that 
is,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  Divine  Mind  could  be 
made  to  suffer  from  the  trivial,  which  is  what  human 
frailty  must  appear  to  it.  But  if  the  divine  nature 
be  viewed  as  subconscious  in  Jesus,  if  it  be  the 
moulder  of  his  human  life  but  not  its  sentience, 
then  the  human  passion  becomes  real  and  intelligible. 

And  surely  such  must  be  the  case  if  all  bodily  life 
is  incarnation — a  binding  down  of  the  spirit  for 


284 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


present  discipline  in  the  terrene  environment.  And 
even  as  the  mystery  of  His,  so  would  the  mystery 
of  man’s  divinity  be  made  intelligible. 


VII 


Human 

personality 


Faith  in 
immortality 


The  conception  of  human  personality  which  we 
have  gained  is,  in  broad  summary,  of  a  center  or 
node  of  creative  energies,  individualized  and  to  a 
certain  extent  made  independent  within  the  whole 
being  of  Nature.  Outwardly  these  energies  find  ex¬ 
pression  in  the  physical  and  perishable  body;  in¬ 
wardly  they  appear  as  a  complexity  of  thoughts 
and  feelings  more  or  less  directly  reflecting  the 
body’s  history,  yet  assuming  an  harmonious  propor¬ 
tion  and  betraying  an  ideal  trend  which  we  interpret 
as  character  and  in  which  we  find  the  true  rationale 
of  bodily  life.  We  have  thus  a  spirit — a  concrete 
intention  of  Nature — assuming  at  once  a  body- 
experience  and  an  ideal  experience,  but  distinctly 
intensifying  its  activities,  where  lies  all  its  promise, 
in  the  ideal.  The  body  resolves  into  a  mere  inci¬ 
dent  of  the  major  development. 

Such  a  conception  is  inherent  ground  for  belief 
in  the  continuance  of  the  personality  after  the  cessa¬ 
tion  of  its  body-experience :  the  whole  raison  d'etre 
lies  otherwhere  than  in  the  body,  in  promise  of  some 
more  adequate  fulfillment  of  the  foreshadowed  type. 
And  this  inherent  likelihood  is  variously  reinforced. 
To  begin  with,  faith  in  immortality  is  so  natural  to 
man  that  its  realization  would  seem  perforce  natural 
to  Nature,  while  the  profound  role  which  this  faith 
has  played  in  the  evolution  of  the  human  mind 
makes  it  impossible  for  us  to  conceive  Nature  as 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


285 


other  than  blindly  monstrous  without  some  satis¬ 
faction  of  the  essential  motif  upon  which  she  has 
contrived  humankind.  Further,  so  far  as  we  can 
discern,  man  is  the  most  capable  of  all  the  lesser 
delegates  of  Nature’s  creative  intelligence,  and  since 
the  alteration  of  the  world  in  ideal  ways  is  so  chiefly 
with  him,  it  can  but  be  inferred  that  she  has  need  of 
his  assistance.  Surely  the  need  is  There,  in  the 
realm  of  his  promise,  far  more  than  Here,  in  his 
crude  apprenticeship. 

In  all  this  there  is  presumption  for  the  continu-  M^n’s 
ance  after  death  of  the  nobler  human  activities.  But  humility 
over  against  such  presumption  must  be  set  a  seem¬ 
ingly  contrariwise  conviction.  This  is  man’s  sense 
of  his  own  puny  weakness  and  unworthiness. 

Even  with  savages  such  conviction  is  present. 

There  is  a  kind  of  wistful  pathos  in  the  Tongan 
belief  that  immortality  pertains  only  to  the  better 
class  of  men,  the  chieftain  class,  while  the  rout  of 
mankind  are  doomed  to  extinction.  And  from  this 
it  is  but  a  step  to  the  widespread  primitive  notion 
that  the  sempiternal  estate  of  the  ordinary  soul  is  a 
wretched  and  emaciate  existence  in  dismal  Sheol  or  sheol 
gloomy  Hades  whence  perchance  a  precarious  few, 
favored  of  the  gods,  may  be  rescued  to  the  bright 
light  of  day.  Our  war-loving  Teuton  forefathers 
conceded  a  Paradise,  Valhalla,  to  the  heroic  slain.  Valhalla 
but  consigned  him  of  the  ^straw-death’  together  with 
wife  and  thrall  to  sunless  Hel ;  and  the  no  less  battle- 
ready  Aztec  deemed  not  only  the  souls  of  slain  war¬ 
riors,  but  those  of  sacrificed  victims,  and — odd  addi¬ 
tion — of  women  dying  in  child-birth,  worthy  a 
future  in  the  train  of  glorious  Tonatiuh,  the  Sun, 
whither  the  man  dead  of  years  or  disease  might  not 


286 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Creator 


Pantheos 


Prime 

Mover 


hope  to  win.  It  may  even  be  that  our  own  Heaven 
and  Hell  are  but  moralistic  refinements  of  an  ancient 
belief  in  selective  immortality. 

To  a  more  matured  thought  the  sense  of  human 
unworthiness  and  belittlement  becomes  accentuated. 
In  the  grandiose  plan  of  a  World  a  mere  mortal  is 
the  most  trivial  of  incidents,  toy  and  occupation  of 
a  day  of  the  Creator’s  plentitude  of  time :  surely  it 
is  a  pitiful  arrogance,  the  very  culmen  of  impious 
conceit,  to  build  expectation  upon  so  frail  a  favor: 
“What  is  a  man  that  thou  shouldst  magnify  him  and 
that  thou  shouldst  set  thine  heart  upon  him  ?”  The 
passionate  cry  of  Job  finds  a  curious  complement  in 
the  frequency  in  primitive  theologies  of  faineant 
creators — supreme  deities  to  whom  no  sacrifice  is 
oflfered  and  for  whom  no  rite  is  performed  because 
they  are  believed  to  be  too  exalted  to  notice  human 
affairs;  such,  for  example,  was  Pachacamac,  the 
Peruvian  pantheos,  whose  name,  Garcilasso  tells  us, 
was  never  uttered  save  with  bowed  head  and  rev¬ 
erent  gesture,  yet  to  whom  no  offering  was  made 
and  no  prayer  addressed. 

In  every  polytheistic  religion  is  to  be  seen  the 
same  tendency.  In  the  lower  hierarchies  are  de¬ 
partmental  or  Tamiliar’  deities  directly  concerned 
with  the  affairs  and  needs  of  the  individual  wor¬ 
shipper.  Above  these,  progressively  more  with¬ 
drawn,  are  gods  dealing  with  tribal,  national  or 
universal  affairs,  until  in  dim  supremacy  is  reached 
some  far  Prime  Mover,  lone  and  majestic,  and  tran¬ 
scendency  oblivious  of  mortal  hap  or  interest. 

And  not  even  Christian  assurance  permits  ap¬ 
proach  to  God  without  humility  of  spirit :  man 
in  himself  is  neither  worthy  nor  capable  of  salva- 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


287 


tion;  Divine  mercy  is  the  only  explanation  of 
Divine  concern  for  him. 

Some  inheritance  of  this  Christian  humility 
there  may  be  in  the  abashment  which  the 
naturalist  professes  in  the  presence  of  Nature. 
Certainly  the  conception  of  the  world  as  a  huge 
cosmic  mill  repetitively  grinding  forth  meaning¬ 
less  destinies,  which,  for  the  most  part,  is  what 
science  yields,  is  not  one  to  inspire  other  feelings 
than  horror  and  fear:  all  that  the  touch  of  such 
a  Nature  can  give  is  a  ghastly  suggestion  of 
throttled  life.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  steady  reten¬ 
tion  of  such  a  conception  is  impossible ;  that  way 
madness  lies.  The  human  mind  is  incapable  of 
regarding  the  world  as  unimbued  with  some 
element  of  inner  mystery,  some  portion  of  that 
apotheosized  human  nature  which  we  call  di¬ 
vinity,  and  it  is  before  this  exaltation  of  his  own 
kind  and  his  own  life  that  man  is  abashed.  The 
naturalist’s  reverence  of  Nature  is  his  instinctive 
acknowledgment  of  Nature’s  animism. 

Here,  I  take  it,  we  come  to  the  pith  and  point 
of  men’s  belief  in  their  own  unworthiness.  The 
scale  in  which  the  worth  is  estimated  is  a  human 
scale,  and  the  reason  for  the  condemnatory  judg¬ 
ment  is  not  that  human  nature  is  so  pitiful  in  its 
essence  but  that  in  this  mortal  life  it  is  so  paltry 
in  its  achievement.  The  fact  of  what  man  is  is 
set  over  against  the  ideal  of  what  he  should  be 
and  is  found  wanting.  The  dwarfed  reality 
shrivels  before  the  giant  possibility. 

That  one  of  Nature’s  facts,  local,  limited, 
evanescent,  should  realize  its  own  limitation  and 
condemn  its  restricted  being  for  the  sake  of  a 


The  cosmic 
mill 


Scale  of 
values 


288 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


God  or 
Nature 


Truth  the 
measure 
of  man 


transcendent  being — here,  surely,  is  a  wonder! 
Yet  only  so  can  we  describe  man’s  dissatisfac¬ 
tion  with  his  local  importunate  physical  embodi¬ 
ment  as  contrasted  with  that  ideal  which  we 
term  Nature’s  Truth.  For  of  that  Over-being, 
be  it  'God’  or  ‘Nature,’  from  the  mystery  and 
spell  of  which  comes  abashment  and  awe,  the 
very  essence  is  human  and  personal.  When  we 
speak  of  Nature  in  the  large,  the  Nature  of 
laws  and  histories  and  destinies,  we  really 
designate  the  ideal  form  of  our  human  intelli¬ 
gence.  We  mean  by  it  no  present  physical  fact, 
but  our  thought  of  what  reality  may  or  must  be 
— that  is  to  say,  our  conceptual  creation. 

Nature’s  universals  are  our  ideals.  It  should 
be  needless  to  add  that,  being  so,  they  are  the 
ultimate  measures  of  our  personalities.  The  hu¬ 
man  mind  creates  itself  in  its  discovery  of  truth, 
and  truth,  in  turn,  is  the  symbol  of  the  mind’s 
growth  and  the  image  of  its  powers.  To  adopt 
Plato’s  metaphor,  human  nature  ‘participates’  in 
the  universal  Nature,  and  the  form  of  this  par¬ 
ticipation  is  truth. 

Truth,  then,  is  the  measure  of  man — as  is 
never  more  evident  than  in  the  belittlement  of 
the  here-and-now  self  in  presence  of  our  con¬ 
ceptual  creations.  But  we  should  not  lose  the 
correlative  axiom :  that  man  is  the  measure  of 
reality.  Nature  as  a  harmony  of  laws  and  pro¬ 
cesses  is  an  ideal  creation,  the  total  truth ;  but 
truth,  participating  in  humanity,  is  the  reflection 
of  an  ideal  human  nature  and  intelligence;  that 
is  to  say,  it  is  the  likeness  of  a  personal  Mind. 

There  is  and  there  can  be  no  evasion  of  our 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


289 


primitive  bent  toward  personification  of  natural 
events  and  ways.  Personification  means  intelli¬ 
gibility,  reduction  of  the  world-riddle  to  homely  Personifi- 
and  familiar  parable,  and  it  is  indispensable  to  all 
ideal  conquest.  The  whole  cast  and  glamour  of 
reality-in-perspective  is  of  wills  and  intentions 
(evolutions,  as  we  say,  having  in  view  the  ex¬ 
ternal  aspects  of  growing  things)  whose  natures 
we  can  only  conceive  as  in  man’s  inner  likeness, 
that  is,  as  personalized. 

But  personification  is  in  many  degrees.  We 
may  say,  for  instance,  that  our  globe  possesses 
a  personality:  it  develops  from  youth  to  age 
like  a  living  being,  runs  its  gamut  of  experience, 
and  at  last  (who  knows?)  sinks  into  the  cold 
and  dark.  At  another  extreme  of  time,  the  sun¬ 
set — a  single  golden  hour,  running  a  course  of 
its  own  and  dying  away  with  at  best  but  the 
imaginary  promise  of  a  successor.  Earth  and 
Evening,  each  has  its  ideal  image  like  an  indwell¬ 
ing  sprite,  and  in  each  is  death  and  decay. 

Mere  personality  is  not  in  itself  escape  from 
transitoriness.  The  ideal  nature  must  be  more 
than  a  map  or  pattern  of  the  reality;  it  must  nature 
have  in  it  something  incommensurable,  it  must 
have  a  range  of  promise  which  outleaps  im¬ 
mediate  being,  ceaselessly  erecting  for  itself 
more  opulent  futures.  Unless  Nature  be  all 
awry  such  a  personality  cannot  but  be  immortal. 

Evolution  implies  a  foreseeing  personality  in 
Nature  as  a  whole.  Possession  of  knowledge, 
prevision,  truth,  reveals  it  in  man.  That  so 
gifted,  at  once  prophet  and  artist,  man  should 
condemn  his  present  backward  attainment,  is 


290 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Tragic 

poetry 


Imitation 
of  life 


but  the  better  surety  for  his  future.  For  the 
correlative  of  his  condemnation  is  his  idealiza¬ 
tion,  and  idealization  is  the  natural  incentive 
to  acquirement.  Without  the  consciousness  of 
present  fraility  and  insufficiency  there  could  be  no 
meaning  in  human  endeavor  and  no  influx  of 
that  aspiration  which  is  the  psychical  secret  of 
evolution.  It  is  not  to  be  thought  that  Nature 
should  have  raised  up  a  power  so  unique  to  no 
end  nor  fulfillment. 

The  truth  that  our  adverse  judgments  of  men 
are  in  fact  but  measures  of  the  enlargement  of 
man’s  nature  is  so  evidenced  in  tragic  poetry 
that  I  would  revert  once  again  to  this  most 
subtle  and  human  of  the  forms  of  art. 

The  Aristotelian  definition  of  tragedy  is  “imi¬ 
tation  of  life,”  but  tragedy  is  much  more  than 
imitation:  it  is  also  an  earnest  and  profound 
criticism,  and  along  with  imaginative  exaltation 
it  implies  in  the  poet  an  attitude  toward  human 
affairs  formed  under  the  domination  of  his  more 
ulterior  faculties.  It  implies  a  largeness  of  view, 
partly  philosophical  perspective,  partly  the  poise 
and  dignity  of  the  poet’s  judicial  office.  For  the 
tragic  poet  is  inevitably  a  judge,  and  that  which 
he  judges  is  the  value  of  human  nature  as  he 
finds  it  and  its  place  in  the  economy  of  the  world 
as  the  world  is  seen  by  him.  It  is  the  truth  and 
convincingness  of  this  world-view  that  gives 
majesty  to  his  art;  it  is  the  economy  and  clarity 
with  which  is  drawn  the  naked  and  essential  man 
that  gives  it  poignancy.  The  mere  material 
catastrophe  is  of  little  moment  compared  with 
the  fact  that  upon  man  in  his  most  utterly  seg- 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


291 


regate  human  character  is  passed  a  judgment 
partaking  of  the  finality  of  the  Last  Judgment. 

I  suppose  that  the  gift  of  cosmic  vision  has 
never  been  more  conspicuous  than  with  the  first 
great  tragic  poet.  Yet  ^schylus  read  man’s  na¬ 
ture  with  a  sympathy  so  broad  that  none  of  its 
traits  could  appear  belittling:  even  its  uglinesses 
assume  heroic  proportions.  And  however  surely 
man  may  be  shown  in  helpless  bond  to  Fate, 
however  certain  the  Nemesis,  there  is  imported 
thereby  no  sense  of  human  triviality:  man  may 
be  weak  and  broken,  a  sorry  pupil  under  the 
tutelage  of  stern  masters,  but  he  is  never  insig¬ 
nificant.  In  fact  he  is  at  the  very  center  of  the 
world  riddle:  it  is  for  him  that  the  decrees  of 
Fate  are  drawn,  for  him  that  the  gods  execute 
their  judgments. 

So  intensely  is  the  ^schylean  cosmos  anthro¬ 
pocentric  that  one  might  almost  define  it  as 
‘Promethean’  from  that  one  of  the  poet’s  trage¬ 
dies  in  which  human  fate  looms  most  august  as  a 
motif  of  world  evolution.  Prometheus  is  the 
Titan  martyr  for  man;  he  is  a  god  ready  to  en¬ 
dure  torment  and  indignity  that  he  may  aid  hu¬ 
manity  to  a  more  godlike  estate.  So  he  brings 
to  man  the  divine  fire  and  the  civilizing  arts 
which  fire  enables.  This  he  does  in  foreknowl¬ 
edge  of  the  terrible  vengeance  of  Zeus — a  fore¬ 
knowledge  which  is  yet  not  sufficient  to  fortify 
his  lips  against  the  cry  of  woe  when  at  last  he  is 
left  by  his  tormentors  chained  on  the  bleak 
Caucasus : 

O  holy  ^ther  and  swift-winging  Winds, 

And  tumbling  Rivers,  and  unrest  of  Sea’s 


^schylus 


Prometheus 

Bound 


292 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Illimitable  laughter !  All-mothering  Earth, 

And  thou  circling  Sun  all-viewing,  ye  I  cry ! 

Behold  me,  god  in  god-inflicted  woe : 

Behold  me,  lacerate  and  worn 
Mid  stripes  and  shame  and  scorn 
Doomed  to  withstand  the  years  that  come  and  go  1 
For  oh,  he  did  devise  me  cruel  wrack — 

New  lord  of  high  Immortals! 

Oh,  alack  1 

Today’s  woes  wailing  so  I  wail  tomorrow’s 
And  whence  shall  spring  an  ending  of  these  sorrows? 


Destiny 


Yet  he  is  not  overborne;  for  his  is  the  gift  of 
prophetic  insight  into  Nature  and  Destiny — ideal 
foresight,  the  supreme  endowment  of  humanity. 
And  so,  even  in  the  midst  of  affliction,  his  spirit 
— symbolizing  the  poet’s  perception  of  the  di¬ 
vine  in  man — maintains  its  austere  reverence  of 
that  Will  of  the  World  which  has  laid  upon  him 
at  once  his  task  and  his  pain. 


Yet,  what  say  I? 

I  have  foreknown  all  things — the  fated  ways, — 

And  on  me  here  falls  naught  unreckoned.  ’Tis  meet 
With  patience  to  bide  out  the  destined  course. 
Saluting  in  inconquerable  Necessity 
The  swerveless  Will.  .  . 

Still,  on  this  theme  of  Fate 
Nor  silence  nor  its  breaking  is  enjoined: 

For  boon  to  mortals  have  I  got  this  pain; 

Yea,  I  am  he  that  searched  the  heavenly  fire 
Forth  from  its  secret  source,  bore  it,  in  the  pith 
Safe-prisoned,  stealthily  thence  to  be  men’s  teacher 
And  the  server  of  their  arts.  So  I  endure 
His  vengeance,  swung  fettered  ’neath  the  barren  sky! 


Martyred 

divinity 


This  strange  myth  of  the  martyred  divinity  is 
but  one  expression  of  an  ever-recurrent  theme — 
the  god  sacrificed  for  man — seeming  to  dominate 
the  shadowy  background  of  the  primitive  human 
consciousness.  At  its  basis  is  the  human  sense 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


293 


of  unworthiness,  the  conviction  of  sin;  at  its  cul¬ 
mination  is  faith  in  redemption,  the  atonement. 
It  is  the  naive  and  perhaps  fundamental  expres¬ 
sion  of  man’s  belief  in  the  world’s  interest  in 
him  and  his  destiny. 

Such  faith  is  the  essential  background  of  noble 
tragedy.  To  the  Greek  view  of  the  world  it  was 
unaffectedly  natural:  men  were  half  divine,  gods 
half  human,  and  Nature  but  the  outworking 
of  the  divine-in-human  destinies  of  mankind. 
But  modern  thought  has  passed  far  from  such 
easy  anthropocentrism.  Nowadays  there  re¬ 
mains  nothing  of  that  neighborliness  of  the  Cos¬ 
mos  which  could  set  its  bounds  just  at  the  out¬ 
skirts  of  the  barbarians  and  establish  its  actuating 
powers  upon  the  near  Olympus.  Earth’s  navel 
is  no  longer  at  Delphi, — nay,  the  earth  itself, 
which  then  seemed  the  center  of  all,  is  but  an 
incident  of  a  solar  system,  in  turn  but  an  incident 
of  the  Universe.  In  a  world  of  which  the 
measures  are  light-years,  what  is  a  mere  man? 
Human  decrees  and  the  ordinations  of  mythic 
gods,  are  they  not  pygmied  beyond  expression 
by  that  Natural  Law  which  constitutes  the 
formulary  of  a  reality  infinitely  more  stable  and 
certain  than  any  personality?  Before  the  mas¬ 
siveness  of  such  conception  even  the  sense  of 
physical  abasement  is  outmatched  by  the  shame 
of  spiritual  littleness  and  of  the  vanities  of  this 
contentious  life. 

The  degree  and  bearings  of  the  transformation 
wrought  is  instructively  brought  out  in  the  suc¬ 
cesses  and  failures  of  that  recent  work  in  which 
the  modern  cosmic  view  finds  its  most  ambi- 


Greek 

anthropo¬ 

centrism 


Modern 

cosmism 


20 


294 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Hardy’s 

Dynasts 


The  world 

en  bloc 


tious  exponent.  Tragic  poetry  has  received  a 
distinctive  addition  to  its  genre  in  Mr.  Hardy’s 
The  Dynas'ts.  Challenging  modernity  appears 
already  in  its  complex  and  novel  structure,  'with 
its  many  acts  and  multitude  of  scenes,  its  shift- 
ings  from  land  to  land,  from  earth  to  overworld 
and  overworld  to  earth,  even  from  sphere  to 
sphere  of  the  empyrean.  And  its  men  are 
handled  in  masses  and  nations  rather  than  as 
individuals,  while  over  and  above  them  are  the 
Phantom  Intelligences,  the  Ancient  Spirit  and 
the  Chorus  of  the  Years,  Spirits  of  Pities,  Spirits 
of  Rumours,  Spirits  Sinister  and  Sardonic, 
Earth’s  Shade, — in  the  background,  dominating 
all,  the  Immanent  Will. 

That  the  first  impression  produced  should  be 
of  uncouthness,  intemperance,  chaos,  is  no  mat¬ 
ter  of  marvel,  for  it  is  not  easy  for  the  imagina¬ 
tion  to  grasp  the  world  en  bloc.  But  a  second 
impression  gives  the  clue  to  the  order  in  this 
chaos,  and  it  is  not  a  little  significant  that  it 
should  come  from  the  sensuous  altitudes  which 
determine  Mr.  Hardy’s  perspectives.  He  shows 
us  segments  of  earth’s  geography  so  broad  that 
the  busying  human  figures  appear  as  ‘Yheese- 
mites,”  and  armies  on  the  march  as  monochrome 
streams  with  a  motion  ‘‘peristaltic  and  vermicu¬ 
lar  like  that  of  caterpillars”;  the  roofs  and  houses 
of  cities  suggest  “the  tesserae  of  an  irregular 
mosaic,”  while  on  the  sea  “far-separated  groups 
of  transports,  convoyed  by  battleships,  float  on 
before  the  wind  almost  imperceptibly,  like 
preened  duck-feathers  across  a  pond.”  Yet  even 
this  breadth  of  view  is  detail  of  the  whole  scope 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


295 


of  the  poet’s  intention.  All  Europe  is  the  scene 
of  his  drama  as  in  the  Fore  Scene  from  the  Over¬ 
world  he  bounds  it: 

The  nether  sky  opens,  and  Europe  is  disclosed  as  a  prone  and  Europa 
emaciated  figure,  the  Alps  shaping  like  a  backbone,  and  the 
branching  mountain-chains  like  ribs,  the  peninsula  plateau  of 
Spain  forming  a  head.  Broad  and  lengthy  lowlands  stretch 
from  the  north  of  France  across  Russia  like  a  gray-green  gar¬ 
ment  hemmed  by  the  Ural  mountains  and  the  glistening  Arctic 
Ocean. 

The  point  of  view  then  sinks  downwards  through  space,  and 
draws  near  to  the  surface  of  the  perturbed  countries,  where 
the  peoples,  distressed  by  events  which  they  did  not  cause,  are 
seen  writhing,  crawling,  heaving,  and  vibrating  in  their  various 
cities  and  nationalities. 

This  altitudinous  cosmical  view  is  the  very 
foundation  of  our  modern  way  of  thinking.  It 
has  a  familiarity  shared  by  no  other  W eltansicht 
— the  degree  of  which  we  can  only  realize  when 
we  try  to  gain  again  the  snug  proportionateness 
of  the  Greek  view  or  the  fantastic  and  nebulous 
Mediaeval  conception  of  a  treacherous  earthly 
vale  opening  to  magical  caverns  beneath  and 
girt  about  with  terrifying  seas  and  monster- 
haunted  marches.  Mr.  Hardy  shows  us  our 
globe  diminutive  and  mapped  and  we  at  once 
appreciate  the  display  as  familiar  and  normal. 

But  when  we  pass  from  this  sensuous  cosmism 
to  the  ideal,  Mr.  Hardy’s  drama  is  not  so  con¬ 
vincing.  Not  that  it  fails  of  either  interest  or 
thrill  nor  yet  of  that  sincere  response  which  is 
recognition  of  a  true  and  moving  portrayal  of 
human  nature.  But  the  great  tragic  emotion,  Tragic 
that  hush  and  suspense  which  betokens  revela- 
tion  of  man’s  inner  character  and  destiny,  this 
we  do  not  meet.  And  the  reason  is  that  Mr. 


296 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Material¬ 
istic  de¬ 
terminism 


Its 

anatomy 


Hardy’s  personifications  of  Nature  (true  to  the 
Nineteenth  Century)  are  insincere  and  half¬ 
hearted.  From  the  Immanent  Will  to  the  Spirits 
of  Rumours  they  represent  rather  a  tour  de  force 
of  the  intellect  than  a  confession  of  veritable 
faith.  The  reality  of  the  poet’s  philosophy  is 
materialistic  determinism — the  very  feeblest  and 
most  tenuous  shadow  of  that  spiritual  Will 
which  we  know  in  human  character  and  are 
coming  to  read  in  Nature’s  evolutions. 

The  hopeless  incongruity  of  this  materialist 
conviction  with  the  instinct  of  true  poetic 
animism  is  made  apparent  when,  in  the  continua¬ 
tion  of  the  Scene  cited,  the  poet  endeavors  to 
visualize  his  philosophy: 

A  new  and  penetrating  light  descends  on  the  spectacle,  endu¬ 
ing  men  and  things  with  a  seeming  transparency,  and  exhibit¬ 
ing  as  one  organism  the  anatomy  of  life  and  movement  in  all 
humanity  and  vitalized  matter  included  in  the  display. 


This  viewing,  after  a  pause,  the  Spirit  of  Pities 
observes : 

Amid  this  scene  of  bodies  substantive 
Strange  waves  I  sight  like  winds  grown  visible, 

Which  bear  men’s  forms  on  their  innumerous  coils, 
Twining  and  serpentining  round  and  through. 

Also  retracting  threads  like  gossamers — 

Except  in  being  irresistible — 

Which  complicate  with  some,  and  balance  all. 

And  the  Spirit  of. the  Years  interprets: 

These  are  the  Prime  volitions, — fibrils,  veins, 
Will-tissues,  nerves  and  pulses  of  the  Cause, 

That  heave  throughout  the  Earth’s  compositure. 

Their  sum  is  like  the  lobule  of  a  Brain 
Evolving  always  that  it  wots  not  of ; 

A  Brain  whose  whole  connotes  the  Everywhere, 

And  whose  procedure  may  but  be  discerned 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


297 


By  phantom  eyes  like  ours ;  the  while  unguessed 
Of  those  it  stirs,  who  (even  as  ye  do)  dream 
Their  motions  free,  their  orderings  supreme; 

Each  life  apart  from  each,  with  power  to  mete 
Its  own  day’s  measures;  balanced,  sel f -complete ; 

Though  they  subsist  but  atoms  of  the  One 
Labouring  through  all,  divisible  from  none. 

Such  effort  to  vivify  dissections  is  merely  gro¬ 
tesque  and  painful,  and  at  the  last  the  poem  fails 
of  convincing  truth  because  it  shares  that  mon¬ 
strous  deformity  vyhich  is  in  the  very  essence 
of  the  Machine  and  gives  a  touch  of  the  horrible 
even  to  the  familiar  tools  of  our  material  life.  In 
each  particular  scene  Mr.  Hardy’s  men  are  hu¬ 
man  flesh  and  blood,  but  in  the  largeness  of  his 
view  they  become  mere  puppets  dandled  and 
jumped  by  a  senseless  world-mill. 

A  chastened  exaltation,  sprung  at  once  from 
humility  in  the  won  and  faith  in  the  unwon  hu¬ 
manity,  is  the  convincing  token  of  great  and  fate¬ 
ful  tragedy.  In  place  of  this  The  Dynasts  leaves 
only  a  sense  of  vanitas  rerum — as  if  the  spectator 
were  grown  old  in  the  seeing  and  had  long 
ceased  to  be  moved  by  events  which  he  still  must 
follow  with  perspicacious  intelligence, — and  we 
turn  from  the  drama,  world-weary  and  indif¬ 
ferent  as  Mr.  Hardy’s  own  gray  Spirit  of  the 
Years. 

It  is  little  strange  that  an  alteration  of  per¬ 
spective  so  great  as  the  modern  view  shows  in 
comparison  with  the  Greek  should  blur  the 
anthropomorphic  cast  of  thought  and  make  less 
vivid  the  personifications  of  the  imagination. 
But  acknowledging  the  change,  there  is  yet  to 
say  whether  it  indeed  involves  so  much  of  a 


Horror 
of  the 
Machine 


V  anitas 
rerum 


298 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Spiritual 

forms 


Longinus 


dehumanizing  of  the  world  as  may  at  first  sight 
appear.  The  anthropomorphism  which  we  re¬ 
ject  is  founded  upon  the  merely  terrene  man, 
and  the  adequate  ground  for  our  rejection  of  it 
is  the  paltriness  of  the  human  body  in  the  phy¬ 
sical  universe  and  the  pettiness  of  current  con¬ 
sciousness  in  comparison  with  the  grandeur  of 
Nature’s  evolutions.  But  there  is  a  far  more 
significant  anthropomorphism — a  psychomorph¬ 
ism — founded  on  that  inner  personality  which 
we  are  coming  to  recognize  as  the  essential  part 
of  man,  and  this,  even  in  our  most  mechanical 
conceptions  we  do  not  wholly  escape.  The  very 
gist  of  our  recoil  before  Nature  is  poignant 
recognition  of  that  secret  and  enduring  self  be¬ 
side  which  the  specious  self  is  but  froth  and  bub¬ 
ble  of  reality,  and  our  abashment  of  Nature  and 
Nature’s  law  is  in  last  analysis  abashment  before 
our  own  idealizing  powers.  Our  measures  of 
Nature’s  greatness  are  our  own  human  concep¬ 
tions,  our  human  mind,  and  that  of  which  we 
stand  in  awe  in  our  contemplations  of  Nature 
can  in  fact  be  nought  other  than  Nature’s  ideal 
image,  of  which,  through  her  subtle  and  pro¬ 
phetic  inspirations,  ourselves  are  the  creators. 

There  is  a  great  passage  in  the  De  Suhlimitate 
of  Longinus — one  of  the  greatest,  I  can  but 
think,  in  literature — setting  forth  at  once  the 
duty  and  glory  of  human  genius  and  the  essence 
of  its  relation  to  the  World: 

Nature  determined  man  to  be  no  low  or  ignoble  animal;  but 
introducing  us  into  life  and  this  entire  universe  as  into  some 
vast  assemblage,  to  be  spectators,  in  a  sort,  of  her  contests, 
and  most  ardent  competitors  therein,  did  then  implant  in  our 
souls  an  invincible  and  eternal  love  of  that  which  is  great  and, 


HUMAN  PERSONALITY 


299 


by  our  own  standard,  more  divine.  Therefore  it  is,  that  for 
the  speculation  and  thought  which  are  within  the  scope  of 
human  endeavour  not  all  the  universe  together  is  sufficient,  our 
conceptions  often  pass  beyond  the  bounds  which  limit  it ;  and  if 
one  were  to  look  upon  life  all  round,  and  see  how  in  all  things 
the  extraordinary,  the  great,  the  beautiful  stand  supreme,  he 
will  at  once  know  for  what  ends  we  have  been  born,^ 

It  is  this  “invincible  and  eternal  love”  of  the 
diviner  part  that  justifies,  and  must  ever  justify, 
with  the  intuitive  certainty  which  Longinus  af¬ 
firms,  our  faith  in  our  own  participation  in  its 
being.  There  is  implied  no  denial  of  that  baser 
part  of  reality  which  is  indissolubly  present  in 
what  we  momentarily  experience.  But  this 
baser  part  is  the  waste  rather  than  the  actuality 
of  life, — the  actuality,  which  is  the  Form  and  the 
Ideal,  is  in  those  supreme  things  which  uner¬ 
ringly  testify  for  what  ends  we  have  been  born. 

It  is  no  little  thing  that  a  mind  should  have 
come  to  be  which  is  capable  of  imagining  a  bet¬ 
ter  than  its  native  world,  even  a  betterment  of 
itself;  and  such  imagination  must  be,  in  some 
sort,  pledge  of  its  own  realization.  What  I  may 
call  the  tragic  sense — the  sense  of  human  unat¬ 
tainment — is  our  most  precious  attestation  of 
the  human  value  of  this  pledge.  It  proves  us 
still  incapable  of  living  faith  in  other  than  a  man- 
centered  world — though  the  Man  be  divine  and 
superhuman — and  it  bears  witness  to  the  en¬ 
largement  of  our  natures  beyond  mortal  bounds. 
In  the  order  of  Nature  it  is  the  psychical  token 
of  progress. 

Realization  of  present  fragmentariness  and 
inadequacy  is  thus  a  token  of  cosmic  health.  If 


“Invincible 

and 

eternal 

love” 


Sense  of 
unattain¬ 
ment 


1  Prickard’s  translation. 


300 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Answer  to 
pessimism 


it  be  saddening  for  the  sense  of  weakness  that 
it  brings  and  the  pain  which  always  attends  a 
breaking  away  from  the  familiar  and  dear,  it  is 
yet  salutary  because  it  is  a  breaking  away  and 
represents  promise  of  a  finer  reality  to  come. 

The  power  to  idealize  is  Nature’s  ad  hominem 
answer  to  pessimism;  and  Man’s  condemnation 
of  man  is  his  vindication  of  humanity. 


VIII.  THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 

I 

Perhaps  the  greatness  of  a  great  character 
is  best  to  be  seen  in  the  multitude  of  analogies 
which  it  evokes;  at  any  rate,  the  quality  of  sug¬ 
gestiveness  makes  secure  draft  upon  our  garrulous 
human  interest  and  certifies  for  its  possessor  some 
substantial  credit.  More  than  any  other  man  Berg¬ 
son  is  the  butt  of  our  contemporary  curiosity;  and 
since  Bergson  is  by  profession  a  thinker,  and  since 
a  thinker,  unlike  your  man  of  deeds,  is  by  profession 
never  obvious,  it  becomes  a  matter  of  moment  to 
discover  just  why  he  so  touches  us  to  the  quick. 
The  answer  is  indicated,  I  think,  by  a  countryman 
of  Bergson’s,  Edouard  Le  Roy,  who  has  put  the 
names  of  Bergson  and  Socrates  in  suggestive  col¬ 
location.  Immediately  we  grasp  the  analogy  and 
guess  the  source  of  Bergson’s  suggestive  power;  for 
we  remember  Socrates’  own  image  of  himself  as  a 
gadfly  rousing  the  noble  but  somnolent  steed  to 
action.  We  have  been  long  lost  in  admiration  of 
the  mighty  thews,  the  glossy  flanks,  the  high  car¬ 
riage  of  our  intellectual  Pegasus;  it  has  remained 
for  Bergson  to  show  him  lumbering  and  scant  of 
breath. 

‘Know  thyself’ :  the  ancient  maxim  has  re¬ 
mained  the  device  of  philosophy  since  Socrates,  the 
device  which  marks  at  least  that  initial  moment 
where,  bending  toward  the  depths  of  the  subject,  it 
undertakes  its  proper  work  of  penetration,  whereas 

301 


Bergson 

and 

Socrates 


Know 

thyself 


302 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Seekers 

of 

inward 

truth 


science  continues  a  surface  expansion.  To  this 
venerable  motto  each  philosophy,  turn  by  turn,  has 
given  a  commentary  and  an  application.  But  M. 
Bergson,  more  than  any  other,  has  profoundly  re¬ 
newed  the  sense  of  this,  as  of  all  that  he  touches.'' 
These  are  words  with  which  M.  Le  Roy  introduces 
his  analogy,  and  assuredly  they  are  words  that  merit 
some  pondering  by  those  who  are  in  quest  of  the 
well-spring  of  that  humanism  which  we  carry  back 
to  the  Greeks — too  often,  I  suspect,  with  the  lugu¬ 
brious  conviction  that  it  was  dried  at  the  source. 

Socrates,  Augustine,  Descartes,  Kant, — yes,  and 
Bergson :  each  of  these  men  is  great  because  he  has 
sought  to  know  first  of  all  his  own  soul.  And  all, 
save  as  yet  the  last,  have  inspired  great  edifices  of 
philosophy,  which  we  count  as  the  treasure-houses 
of  human  thinking.  They  are  men  of  a  type :  per¬ 
tinacious  questors  in  their  central  realm,  indifferent 
to  the  learning  which  makes  our  average  pride, 
eager  for  some  internal  truth  where  others  rest 
content  with  outward  show.  The  knowledge  which 
they  seek  bears  the  better  name  of  wisdom;  for  it 
is  never  that  illusion  of  intellect  which  dissipates 
itself  in  chimerical  consumption  of  second  inten¬ 
tions,  but  always  an  intimate  intuition  so  bound  to 
conduct  that  it  can  point  the  effective  way  to  men's 
salvation.  It  is  knowledge  that  joins  to  action;  it 
is  humanistic  knowledge  in  the  only  true  sense  of 
humanism. 

Socrates,  so  Xenophon  says,  would  not  dispute  of 
that  which  the  Sophists  call  ^ffhe  world"  nor  yet  of 
the  laws  which  govern  the  movements  of  the  stars; 
his  interest  was  in  human  affairs,  above  all  in  jus¬ 
tice  and  courage  and  temperance  and  wisdom.  He 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


303 


‘'brought  philosophy  down  from  heaven,”  diverting 
men’s  attention  from  to  6v  to  to  ayaSov^  from  ontology 
to  morality.  The  world  “below  the  Moon”  was  the 
world  of  his  concern;  and  we  must  remember  the 
sharp  division  which  the  ancients  made  of  this  sub¬ 
lunary  realm;  above  the  Moon  is  the  region  of 
motions  eternal  and  incorruptible,  below  it  is  the 
domain  not  only  of  spatial  change,  of  physical 
motion,  but  also  of  that  change  in  time,  generation 
and  decay,  of  which  the  Moon’s  own  crescence  and 
senescence  is,  so  to  speak,  an  image.  ®mTa  BvarolaL 
TT/acW ;  surely  mortal  things  befit  mortality !  and  what 
is  more  truly  ours  than  this  precious  transiency  of 
love  and  birth  and  death  ?  and  what  more  alien  to  us 
than  a  Being  transcendently  aloof,  whether  in  space 
or  in  thought,  from  all  the  change  and  season  of  our 
days?  All  the  ontological  scheming  and  proclaim¬ 
ing  of  the  pre-Socratics — what  trivial  matter  it 
seems  when  the  “midwife  of  souls”  begins  asking 
after  the  Good! 

In  a  recent  number  of  the  Revue  Neo-Scolastique, 
an  entirely  devout  Thomist  assails  the  Bergsonian 
notion  of  time.  “In  reading  the  long  and  subtle 
developments  given  by  the  author  to  this  thesis” 
(the  intuition  of  time),  says  M.  Farges,  “it  is  im¬ 
possible  for  a  philosopher  even  a  little  familiar  with 
the  conceptions  of  general  metaphysics  and  of  ontol- 
ogy  not  to  be  struck  by  the  number  and  gravity 
of  the  confusions  of  ideas  there  encountered.  The 
most  fundamental  of  our  classic  conceptions  have 
been  more  or  less  emptied  of  their  natural  meaning, 
mutilated,  topsy-turvied  at  pleasure,  to  such  point 
of  distraction  as  to  seize  with  vertigo  an  inexpe¬ 
rienced  reader.  If  we  may  be  permitted  the  expres- 


The  World 
below 
the  Moon 


A  Thomist 
critic 


304 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Sabotage 

of 

ontology 


God  the 
geometrist 


sion,  we  would  say — without  wishing  to  impugn  in 
the  least  the  intentions  of  the  author — that  it  is  a 
veritable  ^sabotage’  of  ontology.”  Un  vrai  ^'sabo¬ 
tage’'  d’Ontologie  I  And  our  Thomist  goes  on  to 
show — with  what  pious  horror  best  leave  to  sur¬ 
mise — that  Bergson  has  violated  all  the  categorical 
conventions  which  make  the  philosophy  of  Aquinas 
the  most  categorical  and  conventional  of  all  phi¬ 
losophies.  Bergson  will  not  play  the  dialectic  game 
— the  essence  of  which  is  to  concede  the  dialectic 
ontology.  Was  it  not  just  so  that  Socrates  shocked 
the  '^physicians  of  ignorance” — Hippias  answering 
questions  of  astronomy  ex  cathedra  and  Protagoras 
sulking  because  Socrates  would  not  "sail  on  his  sea 
of  words,  beyond  sight  of  land?” 

Astronomy  and  dialectic  are  no  doubt  noble  exer¬ 
cises,  befitting  the  high  court  of  philosophy;  but  it 
is  God  alone  who  can  always  geometrize.  For  mere 
mortals  the  urgency  of  conduct  is  fundamental  in 
life;  leisure  for  thought  follows  after;  ethics  is  the 
essential  science;  ontology  and  logic  are  luxuries  of 
the  fortunate.  And  if  at  times  we  lose  ourselves 
in  the  fatuous  game  of  abstraction,  forgetting  the 
human  scale  of  values  and  sacrificing  our  energies 
in  arrogant  attempts  upon  the  empyrean,  then  surely 
the  best  gift  of  philosophy  is  a  recall  to  the  senses. 
"Socrates  autem  primus” — these  are  the  famous 
words  of  Cicero — "philosophiam  devocavit  e  cselo 
et  in  urbibus  conlocavit  et  in  domus  etiam  introduxit 
et  coegit  de  vita  et  moribus  rebusque  bonis  et  malis 
quaerere.” 

II 

The  mind  in  search  of  analogies  must  surely  be 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


305 


struck  by  the  many  analogies  between  pre-Socratic 
Greek  philosophy  and  the  philosophy  called  modern. 
Not  a  school  of  the  one  but  finds  its  analogue  in  the 
other.  The  Milesian  evolutionists  could  not  have 
missed  their  kinship  with  Herbert  Spencer  and  to 
aTreipov  is  dearly  cousin  german  to  the  “Unknow¬ 
able.”  Heraclitean  flux  and  Sophistic  scepticism 
find  their  parallels  in  modern  sensationalism  and 
the  scepticism  of  Hume.  The  relationship  of  the 
Pythagoreans  to  our  mathematical  physicists  is  as 
obvious  as  that  of  the  Democritean  atomism  to  our 
own  prevailing  materialism.  The  Eleatics  are  the 
veritable  archetype  of  German  Absolute  Idealism; 
and  if  Hegel  is  the  modern  Parmenides,  we  no  less 
securely  identify  a  modern  Zeno  in  Mr.  Bradley, 
who  with  triumphant  dialectic  reduces  his  master’s 
teachings  to  absurdity.  I  need  not  speak  of  the  new 
school  of  Protagoras;  they  are  everywhere  self¬ 
proclaiming. 

Plainly,  the  stage  is  superbly  cleared  for  a  modern 
Socrates — provided,  of  course,  that  we  still  have 
something  to  hope  from  philosophy;  for  to  a  cer¬ 
tain  type  of  mind  the  Greeks  have  long  since  pro¬ 
nounced  the  final  philosophic  dicta;  henceforth 
human  experience  can  but  exemplify  what  they,  in 
their  primal  wisdom,  once  for  all  enunciated.  As 
Santayana  expresses  it — with  an  apodictic  austerity 
which  brooks  no  question — “the  age  of  controversy 
is  past;  that  of  interpretation  has  succeeded.”  It 
seems  to  me  that  this  is  a  familiar  note;  the  gaunt 
and  corded  physiognomy  of  Mediaeval  thinking  rises 
before  me,  ascetically  humble  before  the  oracular 
Authority  of  the  Past,  but  savagely  intolerant  of 
the  plastic  and  vital  flesh  which  alone  can  give  the 


Greeks 

and 

Moderns 


The  stage 
cleared 


306 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Utopia 


Laputa 


impress  of  character  to  what  else  must  be  but  carica¬ 
ture  of  our  essential  humanity.  The  main  difference 
is  that  where  your  Medisevalist  lays  his  stress  upon 
the  omniscience  of  Providence,  our  classicists  extol 
the  omniscience  of  the  Greeks — and  as  the  Greeks 
were  undeniably  human,  ipso  facto  their  disciples 
are  humanists  (indeed,  I  should  add  the  humanists). 

And  human  it  is — to  sigh  for  Saturn’s  golden 
reign,  to  remember  Paradise  with  tears, — for 
dreams  such  as  these  mark  the  unconquerable  ideal¬ 
ism  of  a  race  which,  mired  in  the  black  and  stinking 
present,  must  yet  project  its  vision  of  perfection 
into  some  roseate  dawn  of  life.  But  is  it  less  human 
to  look  forward?  Canaan,  Utopia,  the  Celestial 
City,  which  we  can  strive  for  as  well  as  innerly 
see, — are  not  these,  too,  humane?  and  because  they 
are  inspirations  to  effort  as  well  as  patterns  of 
delight,  should  we  therefore  cast  them  forth?  If 
contemplation  is  the  only  virtue,  if  action  is  neces¬ 
sarily  base,  I  am  one  who  is  not  ashamed  to  be 
reckoned  in  with  the  anthropologists — horrific  folk 
who,  remembering  that  the  Greeks  anointed  their 
bodies  with  ointment  from  flasks  of  gracious  form 
and  delicate  design,  with  the  same  thought  recall 
the  strong  butter  which  enriches  the  shining  beauty 
of  the  black  African,  and  thank  their  benignant  stars 
that  creams  and  pomades  are  more  reticent  than  of 
yore. 

Unquestionably  Socrates  would  have  enjoyed  a 
voyage  to  Laputa.  What  a  fine  ironic  speech  he 
would  have  made  about  it !  But  would  he  have  dis¬ 
covered  wisdom  amid  the  star-gazers?  *^One  man 
makes  a  vortex  all  round,  and  steadies  the  earth  by 
the  heaven ;  another  gives  the  air  as  a  support  to  the 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


307 


earth,  which  is  a  sort  of  broad  trough.  Any  power 
which  in  arranging  them  as  they  are  arranges  them 
for  the  best  never  enters  into  their  minds;  and  in¬ 
stead  of  finding  any  superior  strength  in  it,  they 
rather  expect  to  discover  another  Atlas  of  the  world 
who  is  stronger  and  more  everlasting  and  more  con¬ 
taining  than  the  good; — of  the  obligatory  and 
containing  power  of  the  good  they  think  nothing, 
and  yet  this  is  the  principle  which  I  would  fain 
learn  if  any  one  would  teach  me.” 

I  am  not  affirming  that  Bergson  is  in  every  re¬ 
spect  the  Socrates  of  today.  In  many  respects  Wil¬ 
liam  James  seems  more  nearly  to  hold  the  character 
— with  his  eager  and  many-sided  inquisitiveness,  his 
wilful  insistence  upon  the  concrete,  his  inability  to 
see  ideas  other  than  as  principles  of  action,  his 
power  to  seize  and  inspire  his  fellow  men.  James 
is  like  Socrates  in  all  this ;  but  the  Socrates  of  today 
is  a  temper  rather  than  an  individual,  it  is  actuating 
the  thought  of  many  men,  demanding  of  them  that 
their  philosophic  search  be  a  search  after  the  good, 
and  a  good  that  shall  be  not  an  object  of  contempla¬ 
tion  but  a  pattern  of  conduct.  In  France — a  nation 
whose  social  genius  makes  it  a  natural  field  for  the 
Socratic  spirit — this  temper  is  most  marked;  and  it 
is  in  France  that  Bergson  has  performed  the  need¬ 
ful  and  characteristically  Socratic  office  of  confuting 
the  Laputans.  The  modern  mind  has  been  afflicted 
with  a  kind  of  spiritual  astigmatism,  impelling  it  to 
bifocalize  the  world  from  every  angle  of  observa¬ 
tion — “physical  and  psychical,”  “mechanical  and 
teleological,”  “appearance  and  reality,”  all  the  non¬ 
sensical  compartmentalising  which  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  call  philosophy, — and  invariably,  as 


William 

James 


Spiritual 

astigmatism 


308 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Analysis 

and 

intuition 


Poincare 


it  would  seem,  to  make  the  worse  choice  of  some 
cosmic  Ansicht  the  measure  of  our  wisdom.  Berg¬ 
son  protests  against  this.  He  reminds  us  that  dis¬ 
cursive  reason  is  at  best  but  a  preparation  for  more 
thorough  understanding,  for  completer  sense,  and 
that  man’s  part  is  to  know  first  of  all  his  proper  self. 
His  '‘anti-intellectualism”  gives  much  pious  offense, 
but  he  seems  to  me  only  to  be  saying  that  genuine 
knowledge  is  humanly  assimilable  knowledge,  voT^crts 
rather  than  BtdvoLa.  “By  intuition,”  he  says,  “is  meant 
the  kind  of  intellectual  sympathy  by  which  one  places 
oneself  within  an  object  in  order  to  coincide  with 
what  is  unique  in  it  and  consequently  inexpressible. 
Analysis,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  operation  which  re¬ 
duces  the  object  to  elements  already  known,  that  is, 
to  objects  common  both  to  it  and  other  objects.  To 
analyze,  therefore,  is  to  express  a  thing  as  a  func¬ 
tion  of  something  other  than  itself.”  Is  not  this 
plain  statement  of  plain  fact?  If  it  be  not  so,  the 
fault  lies  not  in  the  fact  stated,  but  in  our  own 
grotesque  prepossession  with  that  cellularization  of 
the  mind  which  we  call  psychology,  wherein  we  seek 
to  reduplicate  by  art  the  artificial  cellulse  into  which 
we  would  compress  the  world.  Plato’s  was  a  better 
inspiration;  from  the  world  of  Ideas  we  can  come 
with  illuminated  eyes  to  the  spectacle  of  materiality, 
but  never  from  the  material  world  can  we  surmise 
the  nature  of  that  being  whose  definition  is  power. 
As  Bergson  puts  it,  from  intuition  to  analysis  we 
readily  pass,  but  from  analysis  to  intuition  never. 

HI 

From  a  different  approach  to  the  problem  of 
knowledge  Henri  Poincare  made  quite  as  sharp  a 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


309 


distinction  of  intuition  from  analysis  as  does  Berg¬ 
son;  and  for  the  same  fundamental  reason.  “In 
mathematics,”  he  says,  “logic  is  called  Analysis  and 
to  say  analysis  is  to  say  division,  dissection.  It  can 
have  no  other  instrument  save  the  scalpel  or  the 
microscope.  Logic  and  intuition  have  each  its  neces¬ 
sary  role.  Both  are  indispensable.  Logic,  which 
alone  can  give  certitude,  is  the  instrument  of  demon¬ 
stration;  intuition  is  the  instrument  of  invention.” 
This  is  the  distinction.  The  reason  why  it  is  radical 
Poincare  states  clearly  in  another  connection,  where 
he  is  contrasting  the  analytic  with  the  intuitive  ele¬ 
ments  in  our  conceptions  of  spatial  continua.  After 
resuming  the  analytical  definition  of  a  continuum 
of  w  dimensions  (namely,  “an  ensemble  of  n  co-ordi¬ 
nates”),  he  proceeds: 

“This  definition  makes  a  ready  disposal  of  the 
intuitive  origin  of  the  notion  of  continuity,  and  of 
all  the  riches  which  this  notion  conceals.  It  returns 
to  the  type  of  those  definitions  which  have  become 
so  frequent  in  mathematics  since  the  tendency  to 
‘arithmetize’  this  science, — definitions  mathemat¬ 
ically  irreproachable  but  philosophically  unsatisfy¬ 
ing.  They  replace  the  object  to  be  defined  and  the 
intuitive  notion  of  this  object  by  a  construction  made 
of  simpler  materials;  one  sees  indeed  that  one  can 
effectively  make  this  construction  with  these  mate¬ 
rials,  but  one  sees  also  that  one  can  make  many 
others.  What  is  not  to  be  seen  is  the  deeper  reason 
why  one  assembles  these  materials  in  just  this,  and 
not  in  another  fashion.  The  ‘arithmetization’  of 
mathematics  is  not  a  bad  thing,  but  it  is  not  all.” 

Poincare  diagnoses  precisely  the  weakness  that 
besets  all  abstractive  thinking.  In  mathematics  it  is 


Mathemati¬ 
cal  logic 


Continuity 


Just  this 
World 


310 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Arithme- 

tized 

philosophy 


Greek 

physics 


*‘arithmetization” ;  in  philosophy — and,  I  suspect,  at 
times  in  criticism — it  is  the  scholastic  passion  for 
dichotomizing.  Over-conceptualization,  the  word 
for  the  reality,  the  letter  for  the  spirit — fascinated 
by  the  ease  with  which  we  can  palm  and  shuffle  the 
airy  mintages  of  our  intellect,  we  yield  to  the  gam¬ 
ing  instinct  and  stake  our  all  ...  .  only  to  lose, 
say  Poincare  and  Bergson,  for  truth  is  cast  in  the 
firmer  mould  of  active  experience.  If  philosophy 
stood  for  no  more  than  mental  dexterity,  it  would 
have  been  long  perished.  But  a  living  philosophy 
means  life,  as  Plato  knew, — and  in  the  Parmenides 
what  lordly  sport  he  made  of  your  unredeemed 
dialectic ! 

The  ‘‘arithmetization’’  of  mathematics,  which 
Poincare  contrasts  with  ‘‘intuition,”  represents,  I 
believe,  the  last  stand  in  a  process  of  regressive 
abstraction  which  has  been  going  on  since  the  Hel¬ 
lenes  first  formulated  the  idea  of  physical  science. 
It  is  a  process  so  apt  of  application  that  I  would 
briefly  resume  it. 

The  starting-point  is  figured  by  Archimedes’  de¬ 
mand  for  a  TTov  crrw  from  which  to  move  the  world. 
Such  a  TTov  o-rw,  such  an  immovable  core  of  physical 
reality,  seemed  to  the  Greek  physicists  an  essential 
of  science.  It  is  axiomatic,  says  Dercyllides,  a 
truth  “accordant  with  reason,”  that  in  the  Universe 
some  bodies  are  mobile  and  some  immobile ;  that  all 
are  either  mobile  or  immobile  is  beyond  reason. 
Greek  physics  was  reared  upon  this  assumption. 
The  unmoving  Earth  was  placed  at  the  center  and 
about  it  the  revolving  panorama  of  the  Heavens. 
The  Pythagorean  suggestion  of  an  Earth  and  a 
Counter-Earth  revolving  in  unison  about  a  central 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


311 


fire  is  only  a  variation  of  this,  for  Hestia,  the  Hearth 
of  the  Cosmos,  but  takes  the  place  of  the  unmoving 
Earth.  Even  the  atomism  of  Democritus  and  Lucre¬ 
tius  accepts  the  same  principle;  for  while  the  Cosmos  Cosmic 
takes  its  form  from  the  swirl  of  sweeping  atoms, 
this  is  entirely  because  their  motion  is  a  gravita¬ 
tional,  a  downward  flow:  the  universe  possesses  an 
‘‘up”  and  a  “down,”  a  fixed  spatial  frame  within 
which  all  motions  can  be  measured  and  computed. 

The  Greeks  never  passed  beyond  this  conception; 
and  indeed,  it  is  only  today  that  we  moderns — 
mainly  under  the  guidance  of  Poincare — have  come 
to  realize  the  Active  and  conventional  character  of 
our  formulation  of  the  Cosmos  as  a  function  of 
absolute  time  and  space.  We  have  long  been  taught 
that  Copernicus  accomplished  the  great  translation  Copernicus 
from  the  Old  to  the  New;  and  in  the  field  of  morals 
(little  as  that  was  in  his  intention)  this  is  near  the 
truth,  but  I  greatly  doubt  if  the  real  life  of  his  in¬ 
fluence  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  stimulated  interest 
in  mechanical  motions,  which  resulted  in  New-  Newton 
tonian  physics.  Newton  made  definite  once  for  all 
the  conception  of  a  frame  of  absolute  time  and  abso¬ 
lute  space  within  which  all  change  could  be  reckoned. 

He  carried  to  its  consequence  Greek  astronomy. 

The  material  ttou  (ttw,  in  its  gross  planetary  form, 
disappears,  but  its  place  is  taken  by  the  hardly  less 
material  shape,  spatial  and  temporal,  by  which  all 
possible  events  are  measured  and  circumscribed. 

The  cosmic  stage  is  cleared  for  the  action,  and  it 
remains  only  for  Laplace,  with  his  nebular  gyres,  Laplace 
to  complete  the  mise  en  scdne. 

More  effectually  than  any  other,  Poincare  has 
pricked  this  bubble.  The  axiom  of  Dercyllides, 


312 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Physis 


Mathetnati- 

cal 

continuity 


which  in  Newton’s  thought  is  denied  for  everything 
excepting  the  empty  frame  of  Creation,  he  has 
negated  in  toto.  Time  and  space,  he  has  shown,  are 
as  relative  and  fluxional  as  atoms  and  ions;  they 
expand  with  our  grandeurs  and  contract  with  our 
modesties — or  at  least,  we  cannot  know  if  they  do 
not.  To  put  it  in  other  terms,  there  is  a  limit  to 
our  outer  and  physical  knowledge,  and  that  limit  is 
set,  not  by  the  stations  of  the  stars,  but  by  our  frail 
and  changing  human  needs. 

And  the  ‘"arithmeticians”  ?  Blind  to  the  fact 
that  the  central  meaning  of  life  must  be  the  con¬ 
crete  experience  of  living,  and  step  by  step  driven 
from  the  vivid  <}>v<ns  of  the  Greek  naturalists,  on 
through  the  welter  of  atomism,  and  thence  out  into 
the  chill  vacancy  of  absolute  time  and  space — from 
this  last  resort  banished,  they  still  pursue  their  rest¬ 
less  process  of  standardization  in  a  chaos  of  abstrac¬ 
tion  so  transcendental  that  there  is  nothing  left  to 
standardize.  They  seek  a  Station  and  a  Frame,  alto¬ 
gether  oblivious  of  the  fact  that  their  sole  content  is 
a  chimsera  in  vacuo  hombinans. 

In  a  characteristic  and  eloquent  passage  Poincare 
says :  “Le  continu  physique  est  pour  ainsi  dire  une 
nebuleuse  non  resolue,  les  instruments  les  plus  per- 
fectionnes  ne  pourraient  parvenir  a  la  resoudre; 
.  .  .  .  c’est  Tesprit  seule  qui  peut  la  resoudre  et 
c’est  le  continu  mathematique  qui  est  la  nebuleuse 
resolue  en  etoiles.”  The  stars  themselves  are  ap¬ 
paritions,  singled  by  our  limitations  out  of  a  Nature 
whose  essence  is  fathomless  to  our  gaze. 


IV 

From  the  ancient  axiom  of  the  mobile  and  the 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


313 


immobile,  Aristotle  derives  a  corollary  of  the  utmost 
moment.  “Evidently,”  he  says,  “those  who  say  all 
things  are  at  rest  are  not  right,  nor  are  those  who 
say  that  all  things  are  in  movement.  For  if  all 
things  are  at  rest,  the  same  statements  will  always 
be  true  and  the  same  always  false.  ....  And  if 
all  are  in  motion,  nothing  will  be  true,  nothing 
false.”  In  other  words,  the  frame  of  the  physical 
world  is  also  the  frame  of  the  logical;  truth  and 
error  lock  step  with  time  and  space. 

The  Greeks  invented  and  Aristotle  formulated 
logic.  Like  their  mathematics  it  has  proved  a  potent 
sharpener  of  the  world’s  thought — but,  as  in  the  case 
of  mathematical  thinking,  the  blade  is  in  some  dan¬ 
ger  of  being  whetted  to  a  nub.  The  “arithmetizing” 
of  mathematics  finds  its  parallel  in  the  scholasticizing 
of  the  intellect.  In  each  case  the  error  is  that  of 
identifying  reason  with  the  form  rather  than  with 
the  matter  of  intelligence,  forgetting  that  what 
makes  our  thought  living  thought  is  not  its  power 
of  abstract  construction,  but  its  intuitive  ability  to 
perceive  why  experience  assembles  its  materials  “in 
just  this,  and  not  in  another  fashion.” 

The  Greeks  were  many  things,  but  no  one  will 
deny  that  they  were  not  philologists.  For  them 
speech  was  barbarous  or  Hellenic ;  and  as  speech,  so 
experience.  This  has  been  the  misfortune  of  logic, 
which  in  a  large  sense  has  been  merely  a  refinement 
from  Hellenic  discourse.  That  it  has  adapted  itself 
to  the  like-tempered  tongues  of  western  Europe  is 
perhaps  as  much  due  to  the  autocracy  of  Hellenic 
thought  as  to  their  own  native  genius.  In  any  case, 
the  analytic  tendency,  fostered  in  Low  Latin,  and 
carried  to  its  extreme  in  tongues  developed  under 


Metaphysics 

1012b 


Form  and 
matter  of 
intelligence 


Aristotelian 

logic 


314 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Language 
an  index 
rerum 


Mormon 

architecture 


Latin  patronage  is  little  more  than  the  bitter  exem¬ 
plification  of  category  and  syllogism  in  their  unre¬ 
deemed  application  to  human  discourse.  A  highly 
inflected  language  like  the  Greek  could  sustain  the 
syllogistic  analysis  without  utter  loss  of  life;  but 
the  lapidary  zeal  of  the  Scholastics,  cutting,  sawing, 
polishing  their  concepts  to  nicest  exclusion  and 
closest  interlocking,  has  tended  to  convert  our  in¬ 
strument  of  speech  into  a  cunning  mosaic  rather  than 
the  fluid  reflection  of  thought;  it  is,  as  Plato  might 
say,  ‘‘thrice  removed  from  the  king  and  from  the 
truth.’' 

The  consequence  to  modern  speech  has  been  to 
make  it  hard  and  mechanical;  language  has  become 
an  index  rerum,  a  kind  of  notation  of  experience, 
whose  curious  affinity  to  mathematical  notations  is 
hourly  bringing  mathematics  and  logic  into  more  in¬ 
discriminate  communion.  Undoubtedly  for  practi¬ 
cal  affairs,  for  business,  analytic  speech  is  the  most 
efficient  human  instrument  ever  created, — but  the 
walls  of  the  counting-house  are  not  yet  the  pillars 
of  the  firmament;  to  the  business  of  living  there  is 
to  be  added  the  art  of  living  well.  Our  danger  is  a 
mere  external  fascination  in  the  click  and  glitter  of 
our  highly  polished  verbal  machine;  so  that  our 
thinking  resolves  into  a  drone  of  Aves  and 
Paters,  each  told  by  an  undeniably  solid  bead  and 
each  devoid  of  all  spiritual  significance.  The  most 
horrible  monument  I  have  ever  beheld  is  the  Mor¬ 
mon  temple  in  Salt  Lake  City ;  it  is  built  with  deadly 
symmetry  of  line  and  angle,  every  joint  conspicuous 
and  every  unit  in  relief, — exactly  as  a  child  might 
build  with  blocks;  and  what  makes  it  so  horrible  is 
just  that  it  is  infantile  in  conception  and  monstrous 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


315 


in  size,  the  work  of  beings  in  stature  men,  who  had 
yet  never  been  able  to  put  away  childish  things ;  we 
get  from  it  the  very  shiver  which  the  "deeds  of  the 
Cyclopes  gave  the  Greeks.  Under  the  stringency  of 
a  logic  which  was  no  doubt  a  valuable  criticism  of  a 
more  plastic  speech,  our  modern  discourse,  and  the 
thought  of  which  it  is  the  image,  tends  constantly  to 
sink  into  a  like  monstrous  infantilism. 

Aristotelian  logic  in  its  iron  demand  that  words 
shall  have  that  constancy  of  meaning — conceived  by 
Aristotle  as  a  sort  of  conceptual  essence — which 
they  never  have  in  living  speech,  has  constructed  for 
the  intellectual  world  a  kind  of  frame,  analogous  to 
that  established  by  Greek  mathematics  in  the  physi¬ 
cal  realm,  with  the  principle  of  identity  for  its 
TTOV  CTO).  It  has  enabled  rigid  thinking,  but  in  sub¬ 
stituting  concepts  for  intuitions  it  has  too  often  pur¬ 
chased  elegance  at  a  cost  of  sincerity  and  power. 
There  is  another  form  of  expression,  belonging  to 
barbarous  tongues,  disdained  of  the  Greeks,  which 
it  is  worth  while  to  hold  in  mind  if  only  that  we  may 
gauge  the  distance  we  have  travelled.  Polysynthesis 
or  holophrasis,  it  is  called,  and  a  pertinent  example 
(which  I  borrow  from  Jane  Harrison),  is  the 
Fuegian  mamihlapinatapai  “looking-at-each-other, 
-hoping-that-either-will-offer-to-do-something-which 
-both-parties-desire-but-are-unwilling-to-do.”  The 
vital  situation  is  the  thing  designated  (if  “thing”  it 
may  be  called),  the  expression  being  moulded  to 
suit  just  this,  and  not  any  possible,  mutuality.  If 
speech  can  hit  off  intuition,  we  can  hardly  imagine 
an  apter  conformity. 

The  so-called  “anti-intellectualism”  of  Bergson  is 
no  more  than  a  fundamental  insistence  that  experi- 


Linguistic 

analysis 


Polysyn¬ 

thesis 


316 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Bergson’s 

anti¬ 

intellectual- 

ism 


Fallacy 
of  the 
dividing 
intellect 


ence  is  primarily  holophrastic.  His  criticism  of  the 
logomachies  of  the  conceptmongers,  his  asseveration 
that  the  test  of  reason  is  intuition,  above  all  his  con¬ 
tention  that  la  duree  reelle,  gathering  in  itself  before 
and  after,  is  the  focus  of  reality,  all  this  is  but  his 
studied  protest  against  the  artifice  and  inconse¬ 
quence  of  our  mental  legerdemain.  He  is  telling 
us — what  we  have  often  suspected — that  the  human 
spirit  is  never  garrulous  nor  elegant  in  its  tense  mo¬ 
ments  of  growth,  but  is  rather  awkward  and  stam¬ 
mering,  frail  of  speech  but  gifted  with  a  power  more 
than  of  tongues  to  stir  in  men’s  hearts  a  responsive 
understanding.  What,  I  wonder,  would  become  of 
our  tragedies,  and  the  living  strength  of  them,  save 
for  that  energy  of  situation  and  action  which  always 
at  the  last  outpasses  the  eloquence  of  words  ? 

The  lifelessness,  the  dramatic  sterility,  with  which 
the  mathematical  method  has  invested  the  physical 
universe  is  the  butt  of  Poincare’s  criticism.  The 
similar  lifelessness  and  dramatic  sterility  with  which 
our  philosophy  has  been  infected  is  the  object  of 
Bergson’s  attack.  In  each  case  the  disease — which 
might  well  be  called  the  fallacy  of  the  ‘^dividing  in¬ 
tellect” — is  of  Greek  origin,  though  arithmetization 
and  concept-polishing  have  alike  gone  far  beyond  the 
surmise  of  any  Greek; — and  that  the  disease  is  one 
and  the  same  is  well  enough  evidenced  by  our  con¬ 
temporary  blurring  of  the  boundary  between  logic 
and  mathematics, — an  identical  bent  is  leading  to 
identical  conclusions.^  Bergson  and  Poincare  have 
each  ministered  to  our  ailment,  starting  respectively 


1  “Mathematics  as  a  science  commenced  when  first  some  one,  prob¬ 
ably  a  Greek,  proved  propositions  about  any  things  or  about  some 
things,  without  specification  of  definite  particular  things.”  A.  N.  White¬ 
head,  Introduction  to  Mathematics.  Fans  et  origo  of  logic  and  mathe¬ 
matics  are  thus  explicitly  identified. 


THE  SOCRATIC  BERGSON 


317 


from  its  inner  and  its  outer  symptoms,  but  finding 
an  identical  cure  in  their  critiques  of  our  apprehen¬ 
sions  of  time  and  space,  with  the  single  implication 
of  the  primacy  of  intuition.  Thus  at  last  the  ttou  ottw 
— whether  of  Archimedes  or  Aristotle — is  rightfully 
banished  to  the  realm  of  illusion. 

As  for  the  reputed  “mysticism’’  of  Bergson’s  no¬ 
tion  of  time,  of  /a  duree  reelle,  I  may  best  reply  by 
citing  the  naive  antagonism  of  my  excellent  Thomist. 
“At  first  glance,”  he  says,  “it  would  seem  subtle  and 
indeed  paradoxical  to  wish  to  found  a  whole  phn 
losophy  upon  the  notion  of  Time.  But  upon  reflec¬ 
tion,  and  especially  remembering  the  marvelous 
Peripatetic  synthesis  entirely  erected  upon  the  notion 
of  Movement — a  concept  so  neighboring  that  of 
Time,  one  is  tempted  rather  to  give  credit  to  the 
author, — not  to  be  sure,  without  some  misgiving, 
for  if  Movement  is  a  phenomenon  patent  to  the 
senses,  this  is  not  true  of  Time,  the  most  obscure 
and  mysterious  perhaps  of  all  natural  phenomena. 
This  contrast  was  indeed  already  remarked  by  the 
ancients  when  they  said,  ‘Motus  sensibus  ipsis  patet, 
non  autem  tempus.’  Hence  we  may  very  reasonably 
fear  that  sophism  could  find  naught  more  easy  than 
to  conceal  itself  amid  these  profound  shades,  and 
that  in  place  of  building  upon  a  rock,  as  Aristotle, 
M.  Bergson  erects  his  house  upon  the  shifting  sands 
of  conjecture.”  Proceeding,  he  quotes  Aristotle’s  defi¬ 
nition  of  time  as  the  number  of  motion  in  relation  to 
before  and  after,  dpt6fxb<;  klvt]<J€0)<s  Kara  to  Trporepov  Kal 
varepov,  adding  in  comment :  “This  definition  has  re¬ 
gard  for  the  time  which  measures.  As  to  the  time 
which  is  measured,  it  is  no  other  than  movement,  in 
that  it  falls  under  the  measure  of  the  before  and 


La  duree 
reelle 


Time 

measuring 

and 

measured 


318 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Cosmology 

redivivus 


after.  It  is  the  same  distinction  as  that  of  the 
numbering  number  and  the  numbered  number,  to 

tjPlO iXTjlxcvov j  TO  apiOiirjTOV.^’ 

Truly,  a  completer  justification  of  Bergson’s  in¬ 
tention  could  not  be  required.  Bergson  had  diverted 
attention  from  the  numbering  to  the  numbered;  he 
has  recalled  us  from  the  formal  measure  to  the 
reality  which  is  measured ;  and  he  has  given  us  to  see 
that  that  reality  is  itself  a  movement  which  outruns 
all  our  measures  in  its  creative  evolution  of  a  world. 
Ontology  destroyed  is  cosmology  redivivus. 


IX.  THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 

I 


“OCIENCE,”  writes  Gaston  Milhaud/ 

kZ)  enouncing  its  ever-increasing  series  of  truths, 
obviously  supplies — whether  one  reflect  upon  it  or 
not — the  most  powerful  argument  against  scepti¬ 
cism.  And  in  this  respect  mathematics  plays  a 
special  role  by  reason  of  the  evidence  which  clothes 
all  its  propositions  and  by  reason  of  the  complete 
satisfaction  which  its  demonstrations  give  to  our 
thirst  for  comprehension.  There,  at  least,  is  a  do¬ 
main  where  thought  in  search  of  clarity,  of  evidence, 
and  of  light,  exercises  itself  in  an  ideal  fashion. 
Everyv/here  else,  discussion  is  founded  on  the  right 
to  proclaim  as  certain  an  enounced  truth,  and  accord 
upon  the  value  and  legitimacy  of  each  insight  comes 
but  slowly :  in  mathematics  this  is  not  so.  If,  for  the 
choice  of  axioms,  we  give  ourselves  voluntarily  to 
philosophical  investigations  whose  conclusions  vary, 
at  bottom  there  is  no  one  ready  to  abandon  the  pos¬ 
tulates  of  ancient  geometry,  and  the  question  was 
not  even  proposed  by  the  Greeks.  As  to  demon¬ 
strations,  it  seems  impossible  that  two  minds,  how¬ 
ever  different  they  may  be — granting  their  disposal, 
at  need,  of  obvous  misunderstandings — will  not 
speedily  agree  upon  the  rigor  of  the  reasoning,  and 
consequently  upon  the  rigor  of  the  conclusions.  And 
whether  one  is  aware  of  it  or  not,  the  habit  of  such 
a  movement  of  thought  creates  in  us  a  naive  confi- 

1  Les  Philosophes-gSomHres  de  la  Grice,  1900;  pp.  2-3. 

319 


Science 

and 

mathematics 


320 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Freedom 

and 

restraint 
in  mathe¬ 
matics 


dence  in  the  puissance  of  our  understanding, — so 
that  it  would  be  a  miracle  if  the  philosophical  geome¬ 
ter  did  not  somewhere  testify  to  it,  did  not  some¬ 
times  under  the  most  penetrating  conceptions  bear 
along  a  disconcerting  dogmatism.” 

We  may  take  this  statement,  I  think,  as  a  fair  rep¬ 
resentation  at  once  of  the  fascination  and  the  dan¬ 
gers  which  beset  mathematical  reasonings.  There  is 
no  field  of  human  thought,  I  imagine,  which  yields 
so  paradoxical  a  feeling  of  freedom  and  of  con¬ 
straint  as  does  mathematics :  the  freedom  springing 
from  the  twofold  consciousness,  first,  of  our  having 
chosen  the  postulates  from  which  we  proceed,  and 
second,  of  the  endlessness  of  the  possible  elabora¬ 
tions  of  our  reasonings ;  the  constraint  arising  from 
our  sense  of  the  undeniableness,  and  therefore  the 
necessity,  of  mathematical  demonstrations, — i.  e., 
from  their  freedom  from  contradiction.  Thus  from 
mathematics  we  derive  the  satisfaction  which  our 
instinct  for  law  and  order  always  yields  in  finding 
itself  fulfilled,  without  at  the  same  time  sacrificing 
our  self-gratifying  conviction  of  the  importance  of 
the  human  factor  in  the  operations  performed.  In 
the  study  of  physical  nature  there  is  always  a  cer¬ 
tain  abasement  of  humanity,  due  to  the  passive  atti¬ 
tude  of  scientific  observation,  accompanied  by  a 
feeling  of  outer  and  brute  constraint;  but  the  mathe¬ 
matician,  with  an  even  greater  assurance  of  the 
necessity  of  his  results,  bears  with  him  also  a  lively 
consciousness  of  the  significance  of  his  own  activity 
in  bringing  about  these  results,  and  so  attains,  as  it 
were,  a  kind  of  Zeus-like  supremacy  to  the  fated 
ends  which,  while  they  bind  him,  are  yet  his  own 
enactment. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


321 


But  is  not  this  doubly  reason  for  caution  against 
mathematical  dogmatism?  and  especially  that  form 
of  it  which  rests  its  denial  of  our  more  ordinary  in¬ 
tuitions,  not  upon  its  eventual  translatability,  but 
upon  its  untranslatability  into  the  forms  of  our  com¬ 
mon  human  experience  ?  Doubtless  truth  is  difficult 
and  obscure;  but  dare  we  concede  that  it  is  so  ineffa¬ 
bly  obscure  as  to  transcend  the  discourse  of  life  ?  Of 
course  I  am  speaking  of  the  modern  science  of 
logistic.^ 

II 

What  is  the  meaning  of  number?  and  in  what 
sense  are  the  hairs  of  our  heads  and  the  other  phe¬ 
nomena  of  nature  numbered?  This  is  the  question. 

The  old-fashioned  view  of  number  found  its  es¬ 
sence  to  lie  in  discontinuity  coupled  with  a  notion  of 
series.  “Number  is  discontinuous,’’  says  Clerk-Max¬ 
well;^  “we  pass  from  one  number  to  the  next  per 
saltum.''  The  perception  of  the  discontinuity  was 
regarded  as  empirical  and  intuitive.  In  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  Aristotle,  “We  perceive  number  by  the  ne¬ 
gation  of  continuity,  and  also  by  the  special  senses, 
for  each  sensation  is  a  unity.”*^  The  perception  of 
the  series  was  usually  accredited  to  the  act  of  count¬ 
ing,  though  this  was  often  also  somewhat  confus¬ 
edly  regarded  as  an  act  of  adding.  If  I  speak  of 
this  view  in  a  past  tense,  it  is  only  because  of  its  long 
history;  not  that  it  is  dead. 

In  the  thinking  of  such  men  as  Hobbes  and 
Locke  this  conception  eventuates  in  an  out-and-out 

2  Which  is  a  not  altogether  happy  name;  for  with  the  Greeks  “arith¬ 
metic”  was  the  more,  “logistic”  the  less  theoretic  science.  However, 
it  is  convenient,  and  I  follow  its  use  by  Couturat  (Encyclopa'dia  of 
the  Philosophical  Sciences,  Vol.  I,  Logic,  p.  137). 

^Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  9th  ed.,  Ill,  37. 

4  De  Anima,  42So,  5. 


Mathe¬ 

matical 

dogmatism 


Number 


Aristotle 


322 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Hobbes 


Locke 


nominalism.  “Number/’  quoth  Hobbes, “is  ex¬ 
posed  either  by  the  exposition  of  points  or  of  the 
names  of  number,  one,  two,  three,  etc.;  and  those 
points  must  not  be  contiguous,  so  as  that  they  cannot 
be  distinguished  by  notes,  but  they  must  be  so  placed 
that  they  may  be  discerned  one  from  another;  for 
from  this  it  is  that  number  is  called  discrete  quan¬ 
tity,  whereas  all  quantity  which  is  designed  by  mo¬ 
tion  is  called  continual  quantity.  But  that  number 
may  be  exposed  by  the  names  of  number  it  is  neces¬ 
sary  that  they  be  recited  by  heart  and  in  order,  as 
one,  two,  three,  etc. ;  for  by  saying  one,  one,  one, 
and  so  forward  we  know  not  what  number  we  are 
at  beyond  two  or  three;  which  also  appear  to  us  in 
this  manner  not  as  number,  but  as  figure.” 

It  is  always  worth  while  citing  Locke  in  connec¬ 
tions  of  this  kind,  not  because  of  the  analytical 
value  of  his  expositions,  which  is  usually  slight,  but 
because  he  gives,  with  a  dogmatic  perspicuousness 
that  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired,  the  first  reflections 
of  ordinary  common  sense.  He  says  “By  the  re¬ 
peating  the  idea  of  an  unit  and  joining  it  to  another 
unit,  we  make  thereof  one  collective  idea  marked  by 
the  name  two :  and  whosoever  can  do  this,  and  pro¬ 
ceed  on,  still  adding  one  more  to  the  last  collective 
idea  which  he  had  of  any  number  and  gave  a  name 
to  it,  may  count,  or  have  ideas  for  several  collec¬ 
tions  of  units  distinguished  from  one  another,  as 
far  as  he  hath  a  series  of  names  for  following  num¬ 
bers,  and  a  memory  to  retain  that  series  with  their 
several  names;  all  numeration  being  but  still  the 
adding  of  one  unit  more,  and  giving  to  the  whole 


B  Concerning  Body,  XII,  5. 
6  Essay,  II,  xvi,  5. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


323 


together,  as  comprehended  in  one  idea,  a  new  or 
distinct  name  or  sign,  whereby  to  know  it  from 
those  before  and  after,  and  distinguish  it  from  every 
smaller  or  greater  multitude  of  units.  So  that  he 
that  can  add  one  to  one,  and  so  to  two,  and  so  go  on 
with  his  tale,  taking  still  with  him  the  distinct  names 
belonging  to  every  progression;  and  so  again,  by 
subtracting  an  unit  from  each  collection,  retreat  and 
lessen  them;  is  capable  of  all  the  ideas  of  number 
within  the  compass  of  his  language,  or  for  which 
he  hath  names,  though  perhaps  not  of  more.” 

In  this  account  it  is  obvious  that  Locke  presup¬ 
poses:  (a)  the  notion  of  unity,  which,  indeed,  he 
has  just  previously  stated  to  have  “no  shadow  of 
variety  or  composition  in  it”;  {h)  the  notion  of  a 
collection — his  “collective  idea”;  (c)the  notion  of 
serial  order;  (d)  the  notion  of  quantity — greater 
and  less;  {e)  the  notion  of  a  mathematical  operation 
— addition,  subtraction.  Thus  the  main  elements  in 
the  concept  he  is  describing  are  assumed ;  at  the  same 
time  there  may  be  a  seasoning  of  hard-headedness 
in  his  stout  nominalism.  For  his  numbers  are 
names :  “Without  names  or  marks  we  can  hardly 
make  use  of  numbers  in  reckoning,  especially  where 
the  combination  is  made  up  of  any  great  multitude 
of  units,  which,  put  together  without  a  name  or 
mark  to  distinguish  that  precise  collection,  will 
hardly  be  kept  from  being  a  heap  in  confusion.”  One 
of  the  primary  issues  in  the  modern  discussion  of 
the  nature  of  number  is  just  whether  supersensible 
(or  superintuitible)  mathematical  ideas  do  not  re¬ 
solve  into  mere  nomenclature  and  the  science  itself 
into  a  kind  of  transcendental  logomachy. 

That  the  Lockean  type  of  nominalism  is  by  no 


Locke’s 

presup¬ 

positions 


Flis^ 

nominalism 


324 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Wm.  F. 
Sheppard 


Discon¬ 
tinuity  and 
serial  order 


means  extinct  is  evidenced  by  the  definition  of  num¬ 
ber  offered  in  the  Encyclopcedia  Britannicad  ‘‘Sup¬ 
pose  we  fix  on  a  certain  sequence  of  names  ‘one/ 
‘two/  ‘three/  .  .  or  symbols  such  as  1,  2,  3,  . 
this  sequence  being  always  the  same.  If  we  take  a 
set  of  concrete  objects  and  name  them  in  succession 
‘one/  ‘two/  ‘three/  ....  naming  each  once  and 
once  only,  we  shall  not  get  beyond  a  certain  name, 
e.  g.,  ‘six/  Then,  in  saying  that  the  number  of  ob¬ 
jects  is  six,  what  we  mean  is  that  the  name  of  the 
last  object  named  is  six.  We  therefore  only  require 
a  definite  law  for  the  formation  of  the  successive 
names  or  symbols.  The  symbols  1,  2,  .  .  9,  10  . 
for  instance,  are  formed  according  to  a  definite 
law;  and  in  giving  253  as  the  number  of  a  set  of 
objects  we  mean  that  if  we  attach  to  them  the 
symbols  1,  2,  3,  ....  in  succession,  according  to 
this  law,  the  symbol  attached  to  the  last  object  will 
be  253.  If  we  say  that  this  act  of  attaching  a  symbol 
has  been  performed  253  times,  then  253  is  an  ah~ 
stract  (or  pure)  number.  Underlying  this  defini¬ 
tion,’’  continues  the  writer,  “is  a  certain  assumption, 
viz.,  that  if  we  take  the  objects  in  a  different  order, 
the  last  symbol  attached  will  still  be  253.  This,  in 
an  elementary  treatment  of  the  subject,  must  be  re¬ 
garded  as  axiomatic;  but  it  is  really  a  simple  case 
of  mathematical  induction.” 

The  presupposition  of  discontinuity  and  of  serial 
order  is  as  obvious  in  this  last  as  in  the  two  previ¬ 
ously  given  accounts  of  the  number  concept.  We 
set  out  with  our  known  power  of  observing  differ¬ 
ences  and  naming  things — perceptual  discrimination 
and  apperceptional  unification;  but  by  the  time  we 


7  11th  ed.,  article  “Arithmetic.” 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


325 


have  accomplished  the  office  of  Adam  and  are  taking 
our  earned  rest,  we  discover  that  the  names  we  have 
given  are  vicariously  indifferent  to  the  things  of 
“first  intention,”  and  in  addition  that  they  have  won 
for  themselves  a  wholly  novel  and  stringent  interde¬ 
pendence, — the  smoke  of  our  experience  has  trans¬ 
formed  itself  into  a  hugely  articulate  Jinni,  and,  as 
by  a  miracle,  number  is  manifest!  Aristotle  says,® 
“In  general  what  exists  in  the  essence  of  number, 
besides  quantity,  is  quality;  for  the  essence  of  each 
number  is  what  it  is  when  taken  once,  6  being  not 
what  it  is  when  taken  twice  or  thrice,  but  what  it  is 
once,  that  is,  6.”  It  is  very  apparent  that  a  succes¬ 
sion  of  qualitative  discriminations  will  not  in  itself 
yield  quantity;  and  without  an  understanding  of 
quantity  how  can  number  be  defined  ? 

Ill 

The  ideal  of  the  logisticians  (though  I  speak  with 
misgivings)  is  at  once  the  infallibility  and  the  uni¬ 
versal  applicability  of  their  reasonings.  They  would 
create  for  us  a  rational  universe  entirely  freed  from 
the  taint  of  empiricism,  mathematical  in  its  certain¬ 
ties,  but  hypermathematical  in  its  significance, — in 
short,  they  would  achieve  what  Spinoza  so  greatly 
attempted.  Because  of  the  annoying  miasmas  which 
beset  the  earth-born  speech  of  men,  they  would  sub¬ 
stitute  therefor  a  kind  of  Esperanto  of  the  soul 
(anima  intellectiva)  modeled  after  the  discarnate 
and  purified  symbolism  of  mathematics.  Clearly  the 
approach  to  this  consummacy  of  the  intellect  should 
be  through  the  concept  of  number. 

First  of  all,  this  concept  must  be  relieved  of  all 

8  Metaph.,  1020&. 

22 


Aristotle 


Mathe¬ 

matical 

logic 


Counting 


Russell 


Dedekind 


326  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

traces  of  Lockean  empiricism.  The  simple  notion, 
prevalent  among  the  ordinary,  that  the  idea  of  num¬ 
ber  is  in  some  fashion  derived  from  the  act  of  count¬ 
ing  is  one  of  which  we  must  be  eased.  For  what  is 
meant  by  counting?  “To  this  question  we  usually 
get  only  some  irrelevant  psychological  answer,  as, 
that  counting  consists  in  successive  acts  of  attention. 
In  order  to  count  10,  I  suppose  that  ten  acts  of  at¬ 
tention  are  required :  certainly  a  most  useful  defini¬ 
tion  of  the  number  10!”®  The  point  is  well  taken, 
and  we  can  see  that  it  applies  conclusively  to  the 
whole  British  tradition,  from  Hobbes  onward.  “We 
must  not,  therefore,  bring  in  counting  where  the 
definition  of  numbers  is  in  question.” 

To  be  sure,  this  judgment  has  not  prevailed  in  the 
new  school  ab  initio.  Dedekind  states  that  from  ex¬ 
amination  of  what  takes  place  in  counting  an  aggre¬ 
gate  of  things,  we  are  brought  to  consider  the  mind’s 
powers  (a)  of  relating  things  to  things,  and  (b)  of 
letting  a  thing  correspond  with,  or  represent,  a 
thing;  and  that  upon  these  powers  as  a  foundation 
the  whole  science  of  number  must  be  based.^®  Rela^ 
tion  and  equivalence  are  thus  fundamental  ideas — 
or,  perhaps,  operations — which  get  their  meaning 
from  counting,  and  give  its  meaning  to  number;  but 
it  may  be  that  the  counting  here  meant  is  of  that 
purely  noetic  variety  which  includes  “denumeration” 
of  the  infinite  along  with  “enumeration”  of  the 
finite,  and  which,  putatively,  owes  no  dependence  to 
our  commoner  experience. 

But  if  not  counting,  then  neither  is  mathematical 
induction  the  key  to  the  meaning  of  number;  for 


9  Russell,  Principles  of  Mathematics,  p.  114. 

10  Was  sind  und  was  sollen  die  Zahlen? 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


327 


mathematical  induction,  with  its  dual  stress  upon 
next-to-next  and  recurrence,  is  no  more  than  the  act 
of  counting  transubstantiated  by  that  unity-in-va¬ 
riety  which  is  the  root  of  all  perception.  ‘‘We  may 
define  finite  numbers  as  those  that  can  be  reached 
by  mathematical  induction,  starting  from  0  and  in¬ 
creasing  by  1  at  each  step,”^^  but  such  a  definition 
does  not  apply  to  the  vastly  greater  realm  of  trans- 
finite  numbers, — and  it  would  be  obvious  waste  to 
devote  thought  to  a  definition  applicable  only  to  the 
“little  corner,”  as  Poincare  calls  it,  “where  the  finite 
numbers  hide  themselves.” 

By  what  device,  then,  are  we  to  pry  into  the  mys¬ 
tery  of  number?  What  idea — which  the  mutations 
of  the  Wheel  of  Time  have  brought  back  to  us  freed 
from  the  contaminations  of  a  too  mortal  birth — will 
give  us  its  eluctant  essence?  The  answer  is  familiar  : 
A  finite  cardinal  number  is  a  class  of  equivalent 
classes;  an  infinite  cardinal  number  is  a  class  of 
classes  a  part  of  which  is  equivalent  to  the  whole. 
It  is  the  idea  of  class  which  is  to  resolve  for  us  the 
riddle  of  reasoning. 

Readily  enough  our  imaginations  seize  the  sugges¬ 
tion.  The  older,  empirical  conception  of  number  as 
somehow  directly  derived  from  the  act  of  counting, 
in  reason  as  in  history,  is  replaced  by  one  in  which 
counting  and  all  other  operations  flow  from  an 
initial  insight  into  a  group  situation.  The  point  of 
regard  has  been  reversed,  and  in  place  of  seeing  a 
perceptual  situation  built  up  out  of  moments,  we  see 
the  moments  emerge  from  the  situation;  logical 
priorism  disenthrones  empiricism,  deduction  pre¬ 
cedes  induction — and,  indeed,  not  unnaturally  ab- 


Mathe- 

matical 

induction 


Numbers 

are 

“classes” 


11  Russell,  op.  cit.,  p.  123. 


328 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Influence 
of  tem¬ 
perament 


Limit 


sorbs  the  latter,  for  any  induction  which  may  lay  a 
claim  to  reason  is  but  deduction  disguised/^ 

But  this  might  flow  from  a  mere  distinction  of 
temperament;^^  for  we  have  long  been  accustomed 
to  Urania  and  Pandemos  in  reason  as  in  love.  The 
matter  which  calls  for  a  nicer  determination  is  the 
relation  of  this  term  class  to  its  content.  What  does 
it  mean? 

It  is  difficult  to  be  precise  in  the  analysis  of  terms 
which  are  customarily  defined  only  by  a  set  of  prop¬ 
erties  couched  in  the  form  of  postulates.  What  one 
arrives  at  is  a  word  (Uatus  vocis)  with  a  variety  of 
meanings,  but  meanings  eviscerated  of  that  heart  of 
reality  which  we  feel  to  be  present  in  our  more  cur¬ 
rent,  if  less  critical,  living  speech.  Indeed,  all  that 
sdves  this  rarified  discourse  from  the  emptiness  of 
nominalism  is  the  requirement  of  consistency  as  be¬ 
tween  the  postulates;  their  freedom  from  mutual 
contradiction  is  their  sole  claim  to  a  single  and  cen¬ 
tral  meaning.  This  (if  I  understand  it)  is  the  only 
principle  of  definition  recognized  in  logistic. 

What,  then,  are  the  properties  of  a  ‘^class’^? 
Clearly,  I  think,  the  prime  requisite  is  that  it  shall 
constitute  a  limit.  I  do  not  mean  a  limit  which  con¬ 
veys  a  sense  of  a  beyond  (if  that  can  be  avoided), 
but  a  limit  which  clarifies  our  sense  of  the  within, — 
such  a  limit  as,  for  example,  is  represented  by  the 
cardinal  number  of  the  class  of  finite  numbers,  or 
again,  such  a  limit  as  we  ordinarily  intend  by  the 


lilbid.,  pp.  lln.,  441. 

13  This,  apparently,  is  Poincare’s  notion  of  his  own  divergence  from 
Russell.  “M.  Russell  me  dira,”  he  says,  “qu’il  ne  s’agit  pas  de 
psychologic,  mais  de  logique  et  d’^pistemologie ;  ct  moi,  je  serai  conduit 
a  repondre  qu’il  n’y  a  pas  de  logique  et  d’epistemologie  independantes 
de  la  psychologic;  et  cctte  profession  de  foi  clora  probablement  la  dis¬ 
cussion  parce  qu’ellc  mettra  en  evidence  une  irremediable  divergence 
de  vues.” — Dernikres  pensies,  p.  139. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


329 


word  “universe.”  Without  this  conscious  limita¬ 
tion,  which,  because  we  feel  it  to  be  a  voluntary  in¬ 
tellectual  retrenchment,  a  kind  of  rein  upon  the 
imagination,  we  personify  as  a  “self-limitation,”  no 
conception  of  class  could  be  operant. 

Dedekind’s  solution  of  the  problem  of  continuity 
quite  consciously  rests  upon  the  assumption  of 
limits,  or  limiting  values ;  and  what  is  distinctive  of 
the  notion  of  a  “cut”  (Schnitt)  appears  to  be  just 
that  it  determines  a  limit  which,  so  to  speak,  does  not 
overleap  itself,  and  which  consequently  gives  the 
base  for  a  self-contained  system  of  values.  Every 
“cut”  is,  in  a  sense,  a  zero,  having  the  particular 
property  that  any  variable  magnitude  which  ap¬ 
proaches  the  limit  loses  itself  in  a  value  indistin¬ 
guishable  from  zero.^^  This,  I  take  it,  is  also  the  es¬ 
sential  meaning  of  the  Nul  class — the  class  of  things 
to  which  no  entity  in  the  (given)  universe  corre¬ 
sponds  ;  it  is  essentially  a  boundary  which,  because  it 
is  empty,  cannot  be  used  as  a  turn  or  start  into  con¬ 
tinued  reasonings. 

At  least  we  should  suppose  that  0-limits  could  not 
be  so  used,  but  by  a  kind  of  transcendental  induction 
just  this  is  attempted.  The  cardinal  number  of  all 
finite  numbers,  which  is,  of  course,  infinite,  becomes 
the  first  transfinite  cardinal;  and  the  ordinal  w  (w 
symbolizes  a  progression  modeled  on  the  natural 
suite  1,  2,  3,  .  .  .  n,  n+  .  .  .,  and  so  may  be 
regarded  as  the  generalization  or  law  of  the  process 
of  ordering  sequentially)  becomes  the  first  trans¬ 
finite  ordinal.  By  applying  the  conception  of  a  trans¬ 
finite  ordinal  to  transfinite  cardinals,  it  becomes  pos¬ 
sible  to  conceive  of,  and  perhaps  create,  an  infinite 


Dedekind’s 

Schnitt 


Transfinite 

numbers 


Stetigkeit  und  irraiionale  Zahlen,  IV. 


330 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Spinoza 


Internal 

limitation 


series  of  the  latter — transfinites  of  the  order  a  being 
followed  by  those  of  the  order  p,  and  so  on.  The 
whole  process  is  reminiscent  of  Spinoza’s  assump¬ 
tion  of  possible  infinite  attributes,  other  than  thought 
and  extension,  of  the  divine  substance,  though  it 
seems  to  want  the  restraint  which  left  Spinoza  con¬ 
tent  to  suggest  the  possibility,  and  pass  in  his  phi¬ 
losophizing  to  the  attributive  planes  with  which  hu¬ 
man  experience  familiarizes  us.  By  means  of  such 
interplays  of  conception — infinite  limiting  finite, 
transfinite  limiting  infinite — it  becomes  possible  to 
create  whole  hierarchies  of  classes  and  types,  each 
conclusively  including  what  is  below  it  and  conclu¬ 
sively  ignoring  what  is  above  it.  The  process  is  in¬ 
teresting  and  in  its  way  fruitful,  but  it  is  difficult  to 
see  how  it  could  be  possible  except  for  that  self-im¬ 
position  of  limits  which  distinguish  grade  from 
grade  and  type  from  type,  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  in 
the  imposition  any  other  necessity  than  the  arbitrary 
will  of  the  thinker.  The  limits  set  are  limits  as¬ 
sumed,  and  assumed  with  something  of  the  stark  in¬ 
explicableness  of  a  primitive  tabu — unless  we  con¬ 
cede  that  the  whole  process  is  a  conscious  fiction, 
whose  analogue  is  our  empirical  concentration  of 
immediate  attention  on  immediate  ends. 

But  besides  this  external  principle  of  limitation, 
which  makes  definable  a  self -comprehending  system, 
there  is  another  principle  of  limitation,  an  internal 
one,  which  makes  system  itself  comprehensible.  This 
principle  is  represented  by  the  idea  of  structure  or 
form,  without  which  mathematics  and  reason  alike 
could  not  exist.  The  principle  of  external  limitation 
might  suffice  to  mark  off  for  us  an  islet  of  chaos 
which  we  could  choose  to  regard  as  the  universe,  but 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


331 


only  the  acknowledgment  of  internal  limitations 
could  convert  this  chaotic  universe  into  a  cosmos. 

Now  the  relationships  of  ideas  according  to  this 
principle  of  internal  limitation  assume  two  general  Unity 
forms :  that  of  part-to-part  and  that  of  part-to-whole.  totality 
It  is  obvious^®  that  each  of  these  is  a  relation  of 
order,  and  it  is  also  obvious  that  each  is  derivative 
of  the  idea  of  unity  in  the  two  fundamental  senses  of 
unity.  For  the  relation  of  part-to-whole  clearly 
rests  upon  the  contrasting  unities  of  the  element, 
regarded  as  an  undifferentiated  item,  and  the  thing, 
regarded  as  an  assemblage  of  elements ;  and  the  rela¬ 
tion  of  part-to-part,  while  explicitly  concerned  only 
with  the  relation  of  item  to  item,  clearly  rests  upon 
an  implicit  whole.^®  Unit  and  totality,  atom  and  uni¬ 
verse,  are  the  two  extremes,  each  of  which  assumes 
the  mask  of  unity,  and  the  fact  that  the  atom  may  be 
resolved  into  a  universe  or  the  universe  contracted 


15  “Obvious,”  not  to  logistic,  but  to  our  linguistic  intuitions. 

16  For  the  two  types  of  unity,  cf.  Bergson,  Donnies  imniidiates,  pp. 
58 f.  Of  course  the  logisticians  categorically  deny  that  the  idea  of  class 
involves  that  of  “part-to-whole.”  “Socrates  is  a  man”  may  mean  (1) 
“Socrates  possesses  the  qualities  which  mark  a  human  being” — and  this 
is  the  part-to-whole  relationship — or  (2)_  “Socrates  is  one  among  men,” — 
and  this  is  the  member-to-class  relationship,  expressed  “x  is  an  c” 
(symbolically,  x  e  a),  where  is  a  member  and  a  a  class.  The  dis¬ 
tinction  is  true  enough,  and  it  is  also  true  that  only  the  part-to-whole 
relationship  is  “transitive,”  i.  e.,  subject  to  syllogistic  treatment.  But 
is  it  not  evident  that  the  distinction  is  fundamentally  the  very  dis¬ 
tinction  which  a  philosophy  of  number  is  called  upon  to  explain?  Rea¬ 
soning  qualitatively,  i.  e.,  where  your  terms  are  taken  “by  nature,” 
we  get  judgments  of  type  1;  reasoning  quantitatively,  i.  e.,  with  terms 
taken  “in  respect  to  number,”  we  get  those  of  type  2.  In  judgments 
of  the  member-to-class  type  number  is  assumed,  not  definitely  as  if 
counted,  but  indefinitely  as  if  countable.  That  is,  a  plurality,  which 
is  a  totality  or  aggregate  of  some  sort  (in  so  far  as  limited  by  the  rea¬ 
soning  undertaken),  is  at  least  hypothetically  ‘Taken”;  and  such  a 
plurality  is  what  is  meant  by  a  “class”  (except  in  those  shadowy  ex¬ 
tremes  where  the  class  has  only  one  member  or  none  at  all).  But  if 
there  is  a  plurality  or  aggregate  it  must  have  the  configuration  of  just 
this  (whatever  it  may  turn  out  to  be)  aggregate  which  is  being  dealt 
with — just  the  class  in  question.  Such  configuration  (which  we  might 
call  the  quality  of  a  quantity)  is  precisely  a  whole  of  which  the  mem¬ 
ber  13  a  part, — at  least,  we  use  “whole”  and  “part”  in  this  sense  in 
common  speech,  and  it  is  certainly  significant  that  the  logisticians,  in 
denying  that  “class”  has  this  meaning,  are  forced  to  proclaim  the  term 
undefinable  except  by  its  use — i.  e.,  it  is  left  in  a  state  of  empirical  am¬ 
biguity.  Cf.  Russell,  Principles,  Chaps.  II,  VI j  also,  Burali-Forti  and 
Padoa  in  Vol.  Ill  of  Bibliothique  du  Congris  international  de  Philoso¬ 
phic. 


332 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Contiguity 


One-to-one 

correspond¬ 

ence 


into  an  atom  by  a  simple  act  of  speculative  transla¬ 
tion  does  not  alter  the  essential  character  of  these 
two  moments  of  thought. 

The  relation  of  part-to-part  would,  in  the  world 
experientially  familiar  to  us,  involve  the  meaning 
“next-to-next,”  or  contiguity  of  consecutive  ele¬ 
ments.  This  relation  is  what  makes  the  experiential 
world  finite  and  incomplete;  it  is,  therefore,  felt  as  a 
constraint  of  the  pure  reason,  mathematical  or  other. 
But  the  logisticians  have  discovered  an  escape  from 
this  restriction,  and  like  Spinoza  have  found  their 
freedom  sub  specie  ceternitatis.  The  instrument  of 
emancipation  is  the  notion  of  the  “one-to-one  cor¬ 
respondence’’ ;  it  is  through  this  that  the  infinite  is 
resolved  into  cosmos.  The  idea  is  centrally  that  of 
the  reciprocal  uniformity  of  two  groups  (classes), 
such  that  for  every  element  of  the  one  there  is  in  the 
other,  one,  and  only  one,  corresponding  element. 
Two  groups  or  classes  so  related  are  said  to  have  the 
same  number,  and  the  infinite  is  simply  a  group 
in  which  the  whole  is  related  to  a  part  of  itself  in 
this  manner.^^ 

Now  the  notion  of  a  one-to-one  correspondence  is 
clearly  metempirical.  In  real  life,  we  cannot  make 
things  correspond  absolutely  except  in  absolute  iden¬ 
tification,  i.  e.,  in  loss  of  plurality;  all  other  rela- 


17  The  usual  illustration  is  that  of  the  one-to-one  correspondence  of 
all  the  integers  with  all  the  even  integers,  or  of  the  points  on  a  straight 
line  with  the  points  on  a  plane  or,  indeed,  with  all  the  points  in  space. 
Pascal  (De  C esprit  geometrique,  sect,  i)  gives  an  entirely  analogous 
type  of  illustration  in  his  discussion  of  the  two  infinities,  the  infinitely 
great  and  the  infinitesimally  small,  each,  as  it  were,  a  glass  of  the 
other.  Zero,  he  says,  is  the  proper  indivisible;  it  is  to  number  what 
rest  is  to  motion,  what  an  instant  is  to  time;  in  either  direction  ex¬ 
tend  infinite  integers  and  decimals,  as  correspondent  as  you  please. 
And  Nature,  similarly,  is  as  microscopic  or  as  telescopic  as  your  in¬ 
strument  permits;  there  is  one-to-one  correspondence  between  all  di¬ 
mensions;  man’s  normal  vision  is  only  a  sort  of  zero  section  of  the 
visible.  Perhaps  one  should  go  on-— as  seems  to  be  Pascal’s  arriere 
pensee — to  show  that  man  himself,  with  all  his  faculties,  is  but  a  sort 
of  Zero  in  the  midst  of  the  Universe:  that  is  what  we  mean  by  his 
finitude. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


333 


tionships  involve  some  kind  of  contiguity.  Even 
when  we  set  five  fingers  against  five  fingers,  what  we 
have  empirically  is  not  a  one-to-one  correspondence 
of  two  groups,  but  right  thumb  to  left  thumb,  right 
index  to  left,  and  so  on;  and  this  holds  throughout 
the  empirical  universe.  The  idea  of  number  is,  as 
it  were,  interposed  between  the  severally  adjacent 
digits,  or  perhaps  I  had  better  say  that  the  groups  of 
five  are  groups  of  five  because  they  both  (speaking 
with  Plato)  ‘^participate”  in  ra  ixadrjfmTLKa.  The  cor¬ 
respondence  lies  between  an  empirical  group  which 
is  always  finite  and  incomplete  and  a  metempirical 
system  of  numbers  (supermundane,  if  not  divine) 
representing  the  class  of  all  possible  classes.  If 
Spinoza’s  divine  substance,  within  which  all  attri¬ 
butes  inhere,  were  to  become  articulate  it  would  be 
represented,  I  conceive,  by  just  such  transcendental 
numbers. 

But  we  are  not  to  think  of  these  numbers  as  sev¬ 
erally  interdependent.  Their  reality  rests  upon  no 
idea  of  succession.  We  must  think  of  decads,  duads, 
monads,  triads,  tetrads,  etc.,  not  of  one  .  .  . 
two  .  .  .  three  .  .  .,  four,  etc.  The  order  of  the 
numbers  in  their  own  transcendent  realm  is  some¬ 
thing  superposed  upon  their  cardinal  realities — this 
time  by  a  set  of  relations  which  concerns  them  inter 
se.  Less  than,  greater  than,  equal  to,  or  again 
higher  and  lower  power,  or  again  betweenness  (or 
“mediacy,”  since  the  notion  of  “between”  is  signifi¬ 
cant  only  when  coupled  with  the  idea  of  transition), 
are  relations  of  the  needed  kind.  Now  each  of  these 
sets  of  conceptions  is  a  variant  of  the  parLto-whole 
relation,  of  contained  and  container.  This  is  self- 
evident  in  the  first-named  group.  “Less  than”  and 


Platonic 

numbers 


Transcen 

dental 

order 


334 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Measure 


Equality 


Direction 


Time  and 
space 


^^greater  than”  obviously  rest  upon  the  experiment 
of  mensuration,  of  reduction  to  scale,  and  if  the 
numbers  themselves  are  the  scale,  nevertheless  they 
get  their  steps  or  intervals,  and  hence  their  order, 
from  the  experiences  whose  comparisons  they  name. 
A  scale  may  be  regarded  as  made  up  from  the  suc¬ 
cessive  remainders  in  a  series  of  approximations,  its 
fineness  being  determined  by  the  extent  to  which  the 
approximations  are  carried, — which,  in  last  resort, 
must  be  a  matter  of  industry  or  of  organic  struc¬ 
ture,  in  either  case  empirical.  The  relation  of  equal¬ 
ity  is  not  so  obviously  derived  from  measure,  for 
“equal”  may  signify  not  merely  identity  in  step  or 
scale,  but  also  similiformity  and  equivalence.  Nev¬ 
ertheless,  when  we  consider  that  equivalence  is  no 
more  than  functional  identity  and  that  similiformity 
can  be  no  less  than  this — that  is,  that  each  of  these 
ideas  is  identity  with  a  reservation — it  would  seem 
evident  that  here  too  we  are  dealing  with  a  concept 
whose  final  meaning  is  derived  from  the  part-to- 
whole  relation. 

In  the  case  of  “higher-lower  power”  and  in  the 
case  of  “betweenness”  the  same  general  relation — 
part-to-whole — is  implicit.  Both  of  these  types  of 
expression  are  derivatives  of  space-perception;  they 
are  geometric  in  first  intention.  But  as  principles  of 
order  they  have  to  do  not  with  a  static  but  with  a 
dynamic  geometry.  The  notion  of  direction  or  sense 
is  the  primary  one,  but  the  direction  exists  not  as 
the  expression  of  an  orientation  but  of  a  progression ; 
not  a  set  of  starting-points  or  markers  but  a  set  of 
journeys  is  connoted.  Thus  we  have  time  as  well 
as  space  involved  in  the  empirical  foundation  of 
numerical  order  so  conceived,  the  complete  idea  be- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


335 


ing  the  analogue  of  a  movement  from  any  assumed 
position  in  any  designated  direction,  the  movement 
being  conceived  as  contained  by  its  determinants.  Of 
course,  in  the  case  of  “betweenness”  this  movement 
may  be  ideal,  and  in  that  case  we  have  merely  a  case 
of  syllogistic  transition,  with  the  “between”  repre¬ 
sented  by  the  middle  term ; — but  this  is  simply  intel- 
lectualizing  our  journey.  Again,  the  concept  of 
“betweenness”  may  give  rise  to  right-left,  symmet¬ 
rical-asymmetrical  orders;  but  here,  too,  we  have 
only  special  complications  of  the  familiar  idea,  for 
right-left  are  clearly  but  alternative  journeys,  a  di¬ 
lemma  of  roads  one  or  the  other  of  which  our  action 
must  make  real  (hence  defining  the  whole)  while 
symmetry  and  its  opposite  can  hardly  be  conceived 
apart  from  measurement,  for  indeed  the  whole  no¬ 
tion  of  proportion  is  dependent  upon  some  kind  of 
repetition  (which  again  throws  us  back  upon  time 
and  space  for  our  analogues). 

Thus  the  logistic  conception  of  number,  starting 
with  the  assumption  of  class  as  the  essential  numeri¬ 
cal  idea,  proceeds  in  two  directions,  (a)  Outwardly, 
it  posits  a  limit  or  law  within  which  must  fall  all 
the  elements  which  make  the  class  a  class,  capable 
of  structure.  And  that  this  outward  limitation  is 
made  in  good  faith  as  essential  to  the  idea  is  suffi¬ 
ciently  evidenced  by  the  recognized  possibility  of  a 
class  including  classes,  of  a  class  of  classes,  and 
finally  of  the  class  of  all  possible  classes, — a  verita¬ 
ble  hierarchy  of  types  of  limitation,  (b)  Inwardly, 
there  are  posited  two  types  of  structural  relation 
which  may  be  described  as  the  principles  of  internal 


Motion 


Logistic 

conception 

of 

number 


18  So  also  “before-after.”  Past  time  is  commonly  thought  as  a  re¬ 
treat  from  the  present,  future  time  as  an  advance. 


336 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  One 
and  the 
Many 


limitation.  These  are  the  relation  of  part  to  part 
and  part  to  whole.  From  the  first  is  derived  that 
freedom  to  make  comparisons  which  makes  possible 
— or,  is  the  possibility  of — the  transcendental  inde¬ 
pendence  that  distinguishes  pure  number.  From  the 
second  flows  the  whole  concept  of  order,  and  espe¬ 
cially  the  notion  of  series  or  progression  without 
which  the  idea  of  quantity  (i.  e.,  greater-less)  could 
not  be. 

If  we  ask  what  concepts  are  fundamental  in  such 
a  construction,  three  seem  to  stand  predominant: 
class,  element,  relation.  But  the  two  first,  class  and 
element,  are  surely  no  other  than  the  two  meanings 
which  we  commonly  ascribe  to  unity,  while  relation 
is  quite  as  clearly  the  function  (and  therefore  the 
meaning)  of  plurality.  The  one  and  the  many  are 
thus  the  fundamentals  of  number, — and  already  we 
seem  to  be  within  hailing  distance  of  the  Hellenic 
categories;  subject  and  attribute,  thing  and  quality, 
are  recurrently  proximate.  Has  the  Wheel  of  Time 
indeed  completed  its  circuit?  and  is  philosophy  to 
begin  anew?  Or  were  we  perhaps  right  as  to  the 
distinction  of  temperaments,  and  is  logistic  but  an 
exercise  of  the  lovers  of  Uranian  reason? 


IV 


SecundcB 

intentiones 


At  the  beginning  of  this  discussion  I  quoted  from 
Gaston  Milhaud  a  word  of  caution  in  regard  to  that 
dogmatism  which  issues  from  a  too  naive  confi¬ 
dence  in  the  powers  of  our  understanding,  especially 
when  freed,  as  it  is  in  mathematical  logic,  to  con¬ 
sume  its  own  intentions.  I  would  repeat  this  cau¬ 
tion,  having  in  mind  certain  developments  of  this 
logic  based  upon  the  principles  already  examined. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


337 


These  developments  issue  from  that  abstractive 
freedom  which  is  the  especial  pitfall  of  the  Uranian 
mind.  When  in  a  given  situation  a  given  form  is 
discovered,  the  statement  of  this  form  is  what  we 
call  the  description  of  the  situation,  for  it  is  only- 
forms  that  we  can  state.  But  a  form  so  abstracted 
— and  this  is  the  law  of  our  rational  life — is  invaria¬ 
bly  made  the  measure  of  new  situations.  The  fact 
that  it  can  never  be  applied  to  a  new  situation  ex¬ 
cept  with  some  more  or  less  accommodating  defor¬ 
mation  is  a  fact  which  we  customarily  and  conveni¬ 
ently  neglect,  or  if  we  remember  it,  it  is  only  for  the 
sake  of  abstracting  from  the  more  comprehensive 
situation  given  by  the  group  of  deformations  a  new 
form  of  forms  which  shall  serve  in  its  turn  for  the 
first  of  a  series  of  modifications  of  some  super-form 
of  forms,  and  so  on; — i.  e.,  our  pragmatic  thinking, 
as  it  becomes  clogged  by  the  impertinencies  of  fact, 
is  clarified  by  being  transmuted  into  a  rote  of  “sec¬ 
ond  intentions”  grouped  by  our  interests ;  and  these, 
again,  are  the  entelechies  of  still  higher  formal 
orders,  ordained  by  interests  yet  more  remote ; 
whence,  we  may  presume,  the  Idea  of  Ideas  breath¬ 
lessly  emerges  as  we  pass  above  the  sphere  which 
bounds  our  empyrean. 

Now  there  are  two  modes  in  which  this  process  is 
applied  in  the  logistic  analysis  of  number,  corre¬ 
sponding  to  the  two  types  of  relation  of  a  class  to  its 
limits  which  we  have  heretofore  stated.  These  two 
modes  might  be  described  as  the  modes  of  external 
and  internal  transcendence  of  unity. 

The  first  of  these,  the  external  transcendence,  is 
effected  by  analogical  reasoning  the  base  of  which  is 
the  so-called  “natural”  suite  of  numbers,  the  succes- 


The  ^ 

Uranian 

mind 


Modes  of 
transcend¬ 
ing  unity 


338 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


External 

transcend¬ 

ence 


Internal 

transcend¬ 

ence 


sion  of  positive  integers  1,  2,  3  .  .  .  .  .  . 

Now  the  number  which  is  the  infinite  number  of 
such  integers,  is  ^ ;  but  w  is  yet  more, — w  is  also  the 
principle  of  description  which  is  immanent  in  the 
natural  numbers  naturally  arranged;  it  is  the  princi¬ 
ple  of  numerical  order  as  evinced  in  one-to-one  cor¬ 
respondences,  and  so  is  the  key  to  the  analysis  of  all 
denumerable  groups.  The  postulates  underlying 
descriptions  of  the  type  w  are  (a)  the  postulates  of 
linear  order,  and  {h)  postulates  of  sequence — Dede- 
kind’s  for  example.  From  the  combination  of  these 
two  ideas  issues  the  conception  of  a  discrete  series, 
though  when  we  consider  that  the  first  of  these  is 
symbolized  merely  by  the  idea  of  inequality  (<,>), 
i.  e.,  by  quantity,  and  the  second  by  that  of  limit, 
i.  e.,  by  class,  it  does  not  appear  that  ‘‘discrete  series’^ 
spells  much  more  than  “whole  numbers.^’  Never¬ 
theless,  as  symbolized  in  w  it  becomes  the  beginning 
of  a  transfinite  hierarchy  of  orders;  for  it  is  the  prin¬ 
ciple  (or,  shall  I  say,  the  analogy)  of  the  suite  of 
finite  numbers  which  sets  in  order  the  houses  of  the 
infinite, — there  the  last  becomes  first.  Omega  the 
prior  of  Alpha,  and  the  unity  of  the  finite  integers  is 
transcended  by  numbers  ay  reaching  to  the  order  2o), 
while  beyond  this  we  may  suspect  yet  more  tran¬ 
scendent  orders  of  hyper-alphas. 

But  this  external  transcendence  of  unity  is  com¬ 
plemented  by  an  internal  transcendence ;  there  is  not 
only  a  metempirical  macrocosmos,  but  a  metempiri- 
cal  microcosmos.  This  is  shown  forth  when  in  the 
description  of  order  the  notion  of  sequence  is  re¬ 
placed  by  that  of  betweenness,  or  mediacy,  which  is 
to  be  conceived  as  a  kind  of  eternal  negation  of 
next-to-nextness  without  loss  of  plurality.  There 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


339 


are  two  kinds  of  numerical  order  exemplifying  this 
internal  transcendency.  When  a  series  is  endlessly 
linear  and  yet  endlessly  median,  i.  e.,  when  it  has  no 
beginning  nor  middle  nor  end  but  only  and  always 
a  median  term  between  any  two  terms,  it  is  dense. 
When  a  series  is  limitedly  linear  but  has  no  middle 
term,  it  is  continuous.  The  endless  fractioning  of  a 
difference  in  a  process  of  approximation — as,  for 
example,  the  endless  interstitial  fractions  required 
to  complete  the  suite  of  all  rational  numbers — is 
image  of  the  dense  series;  the  clogging  of  an  inter¬ 
val  by  the  sum  of  its  own  possibilities  is  the  image 
of  the  continuous  series — for  example,  the  series 
5  o . ^  I  is  fulfilled  by  the  aggregate  of  num¬ 

bers  rational  and  irrational  there  comprised.  Series 
of  each  of  these  types  are  transfinite;  but  there  is  an 
important  difference  in  structure  between  them,  for 
only  the  dense  series  is  denumerable  (i.  e.,  figurable 
by  the  progression  of  positive  integers),  while  only 
the  continuum  is  susceptible  of  ratio  and  of  measure, 
for  it  alone  has  limit.  Of  course  the  dense  series  is 
only  metempirically  countable  and  the  continuous 
series  measurable  only  metempirically,  so  that  to 
note  that  we  seem  to  have  here  naught  but  a  tran- 
scendentalizing  of  the  Aristotelian  TrXrjOo^  and  jueyc^o?, 
plurality  and  magnitude,  is  to  suggest  an  empirical 
meaning  for  what  is  by  definition  beyond  experience. 

And  yet  is  this  suggestion  without  reason?  The 
transcendentalities  of  logistic  are  accomplished  in 
two  directions,  which  might  be  termed  the  gross 
anatomy  and  the  histological  analysis  of  the  num¬ 
ber-corpus  ;  and  yet,  in  order  that  the  directions  may 
be  meaningful,  must  we  not  recognize  some  proxi¬ 
mate  and  experimental  greater-less  which  is  the  here 


Dense  and 
continuous 
series 


Metaphysics 

1020a 


340 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Natural 
numbers 
and  the 
transfinite 


from  which  we  orient  these  directions?  This  seems 
clearly  implied  by  the  important  role  played  by  the 
conception  of  the  suite  of  ‘"natural”  numbers,  and 
again  by  that  of  the  line,  in  the  representation  of 
order.  Very  likely  it  is  true  that  finite  numbers  can¬ 
not  be  satisfactorily  defined  except  in  relation  to 
transfinite  classes,  but  can  the  transfinite  be  defined 
without  first  assuming  the  finite?  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  transfinite  orders  seem  all  to  be  got  by  a 
process  of  progressive  abstraction  and  recombina¬ 
tion  of  qualities  assumed  on  the  analogy  of  the  nat¬ 
ural  numbers ;  it  is  as  if,  by  a  cunning  complexity  of 
mirrors,  the  natural  suite  were  made  to  suffer  indefi¬ 
nite  distortions,  variously  deforming  its  native  prop¬ 
erties  and  translating  them  from  plane  to  plane  and 
from  space  to  space  in  a  succession  of  saltus,  as 
many  as  one  has  patience  for.^® 

The  process  is  legitimate  enough  if  we  be  not 
duped  by  its  parlous  illusions.  That  is,  we  must  pre¬ 
serve  our  sanity  (which  is  nothing  less  than  our 
common-sense  faith  in  our  common-sense  intui¬ 
tions)  ;  and  for  this  I  can  conceive  no  better  rules 


19  This  right  of  saltation  is  clearly  the  foundation  of  the  conception 
of  transfinity.  “In  recent  times  there  is  arisen,  in  geometry  and  in 
particular  in  the  theory  of  functions, _  a  new  type  of  conception  of  the 
infinite;  according  to  these  new  notions,  in  the  study  of  an  analytic 
function  of  a  complex  variable  magnitude  usage  calls  for  the  repre¬ 
sentation,  in  the  plane  which  represents  the  complex  variable,  of  a 
unique  point  situated  in  the  infinite,  that  is  to  say,  infinitely  distant,  but 
nevertheless  determined,  and^  for  the  examination  of  the  manner  in 
which  this  function^  comports  itself  in  the  neighborhood  of  this-  absolute 
point  as  in  the  neighborhood  of  any  point  whatever.  It  is  seen  then 
that  the  function  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  point  infinitely  remote  acts 
precisely  as  it  would  act  in  that  of  every  other  point  located  in  the 
finite,  so  that  one  is  fully  authorized  in  this  case  to  represent  the  in¬ 
finite  as  transported  to  a  point  altogether  determined.^  When  the  infinite 
is  presented  in  a  form  thus  determined,  I  call  it  infinite  properly  so- 
called.” — G.  Cantor,  Acta  Mathematica,  2,  p.  382.  Poincar6  founds  his 
conception  of  dimension  upon  the  notion  of  the  “cut”  (DernUres 
pensees,  p.  65;  La  laleur  de^  la  science,  pp.  97f),  which,  since  it  implies 
a  new  law  in  each  new  location,  seems  a  more  legitimate  use  of  the  right 
(or  intuitive  power,  as  Poincard  would  make  it)  of  overleaping 
Iwundaries  ideally  set.  Plato's  conception  of  the  cosmos  as  made  up  of 
intervals  and  limits  held  together  by  proportion  is  not  far  from  this 
iTimaus,  35-36,  53-57;  cf.  rhilehus,  14c-27h). 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


341 


than  are  implied  in  Aristotle’s  dicta  (1)  that  when 
we  speak  with  reason  we  must  say  something  with 
a  communicable  meaning,  and  (2)  that  “third  man” 
abstractions  are  wasted  breaths. The  first  of  these 
is  a  pragmatic  statement  of  the  law  of  contradiction 
applied  to  discourse ;  the  second  is  a  caution  against 
the  tautology  involved  in  the  regress  to  infinity.  If 
we  adhere  to  the  first  we  cannot  shift  our  perspec¬ 
tive  (say,  from  finite  to  transfinite)  without  distor¬ 
tion  of  meaning,  i.  e.,  without  altering  our  predica¬ 
tion;  if  we  adhere  to  the  second  we  cannot  make 
abstractions  of  abstractions  without  losing  reality 
altogether. 

Now  it  would  seem  that  logistic  fearlessly  invites 
both  of  these  perils.  In  the  description  of  classes, 
for  example,  the  forms  of  expression  travesty  the 
sense  of  language.  For  what  can  be  the  common- 
sense,  linguistic  meaning  of  a  Nul-class,  which  must 
be  described  as  that  class  which  contains  no  element, 
or  as  that  of  which  the  universe  (of  discourse)  fur¬ 
nishes  no  instance?  Or  again,  by  what  right  of 
speech  may  we  speak  of  the  class  a  as  the  “class” 
which  contains  only  af  In  the  first  of  these  cases 
we  are  using  the  language  of  plurality  about  noth¬ 
ing,  and  in  the  second  about  one.  And  if  we 
go  a  step  further  and  speak  of  x'  as  the  sole  element 
of  the  class  whose  sole  member  is  .v,  is  this  more 
than  a  vicious  play  upon  the  conception  of  part  and 
whole  Beyond  this  there  is  the  x"  which  is  the 
sole  content  of  the  class  whose  sole  element  is 
— and  we  are  fairly  launched  in  the  infinite  tautolo¬ 
gies  of  the  “third  man.” 


Aristotle’s 
criteria  of 
common- 
sense 


Logistic 
and  the 
“third  man” 


Metaph.,  IOO60. 

21  Perhaps  I  should  mention  that  Burali-Forti  et  al.  make  distinction 
between  “is  an  element  of"  and  “is  contained  by." 


23 


342 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Symbolism 


Nonsensical 

assertions 


Formal  refinements  of  analysis,  when  freed  from 
the  leadings  of  empirical  need,  may  defeat  the  very 
end  of  analysis.  Thought  becomes  not  purified,  but 
anaemic;  in  a  world  of  ideas  where  not  only  is  lan¬ 
guage  replaced  by  symbols,  but  these  by  symbols  of 
symbols,  all  linguistically  ineffable,  it  is  small  won¬ 
der  that  identities  and  the  sense  for  the  law  of 
identity  vanish  away,  so  that  no  longer,  in  order 
to  reason,  do  we  need  to  speak  significantly  as  Aris¬ 
totle  would  require,  nor  indeed  to  speak  at  all. 
And  with  the  disappearance  of  identities  from  this 
analytic  attrition,  it  is  but  to  be  expected  that  there 
will  emerge  that  “liberty  of  contradiction”^^  which 
solves  infinity  by  denying  sense  and  confounds  truth 
with  paradox.  The  ultimate  reason  of  the  world 
becomes  a  relation  of  relations  which,  if  it  could 
say  anything,  would  say  just  that  the  world  exists, 
catholically  comprehensive  of  all  contradictions,  but 
which,  since  it  is  unutterable,  is  in  so  far  inferior 
to  the  sacred  monosyllable  Om. 

I  am  quite  willing  to  agree  that  there  is  a  sense 
in  which  this  world  is  the  best  possible  world,  and 
indeed  a  sense  in  which  it  is  the  only  possible 
world,  and  even  a  sense  in  which  it  is  all  possible 
worlds, — but  when  I  have  got  so  far  I  begin  to 
suspect  that  I  am  being  duped  by  my  own  tongue 
and  I  deem  it  the  modesty  of  reason  to  conserve 
my  breath.  Is  there  no  like  nonsensicality  in  the 
refutation  of  the  axiom  that  the  whole  is  greater 
than  the  part?  And  have  we  made  “infinity”  a 
more  usable  notion  (I  will  not  say  in  logistic,  but 
in  reason)'^  because  we  can  juggle  a  part  into  a 

22  Cf.  Poincar6,  Science  et  methode,  pp.  195f. 

23  I  seem  to  discern  among  the  logisticians  themselves,  when  they 
are  speaking  the  language  of  philosophy,  a  tendency  to  employ  the  idea 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


343 


kind  of  equality  with  its  whole  by  nominalizing  our 
definitions?  Common  sense,  we  may  be  sure,  will 
be  slow  to  relinquish  the  intuitions  upon  which  it 
acts;  and  will  not  our  humaner  reason  itself,  when 
it  meets  contradiction  assuming  the  guise  of  in¬ 
fallible  truth,  begin  to  suspect  that  the  ghosts  of 
Duns  and  Occam  are  coruscating  behind  the  scenes  ? 

V 


The  attempts  of  the  logisticians  to  define  number 
by  the  unaided  agilities  of  the  reason  are,  in  the  end, 
little  more  satisfying  than  is  the  confident  empiri¬ 
cism  of  Locke.  No  one  can  question  their  demon¬ 
strations,  granted  their  premises;  but  no  one,  in  the 
right  mind  of  common  sense,  can  grant  the  premises. 
It  is  incumbent  upon  us,  then,  to  ask  whether  logistic 
has,  after  all,  quite  so  efficiently  scotched  the  par¬ 
ticular  theory  whose  downfall  it  proclaims, — I  mean 
the  intuitionism  especially  associated  with  the  name 
of  Kant. 

“The  pure  form  of  all  quantities  for  the  outer 
sense,”  says  Kant,^^  “is  space;  the  pure  form  of 
objects  of  sense  in  general  is  time.  But  the  pure 
schema  of  quantity,  as  a  concept  of  the  understand- 


of  what  Cantor  terms  “the  infinite  improperly  so  called”  in  place  of 
that  “properly-called”  logistic  infinite  which  could  hardly  be  expected 
to  convey  an  intelligible  idea  when  severed  from  its  nominalistic  illus¬ 
trations.  And  speaking  of  these  illustrations,  why  should  we  stop  with 
an  infinite  whose  part  equals  its  whole?  Suppose  we  define  Chaos  as  a 
nul-class  (X=:0),  and  Cosmos^  as  the  class  of  all  ordered  classes,  infinite 
in  number  (K==w).  Then  to  Skov,  the  Whole,  (H),  will  be  equal  to  a 
part  of  itself,  a  logistic  infinity  (X-|-K=H,  or,  O+wpaj),  But  suppose, 
in  addition  to  infinite  K,  the  Demiurge  (since  that  is  his  business)  de¬ 
termine  other  ordered  classes  (K'),  as  many  as  he  may  choose.  K'  will 
belong  to  K,  as  being  ordered  classes,  but  cannot  add  to  the  number 
of  K  which  is  infinite,  nor  to  U  with  which  K  is  already  in  a  com¬ 
plete  one-to-one  correspondence.  Then  K(=K-|-K')  > II(=K+X),  and 
the  part  is  greater  than  the  whole.  Of  course  this  is  a  play  upon  the 
idea  of  progression  in  time;  perhaps  none  the  less  a  fair  image  of  the 
course  of  reason, — though  “I  hold  it  not  honesty  to  have  it  thus  set 
down.” 


24  Kritik  der  reinen  Vernunft,  182. 


Ghosts  of 
Duns  and 
Occam 


Kantian 

intuition 


Category 
of  quantity 


344 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Synthetic 
activity 
of  mind 


ing,  is  mimher,  which  is  a  representation  concep¬ 
tually  combining  the  successive  addition  of  unit  to 
like  unit.  Thus  number  is  nothing  other  than  the 
unity  of  the  synthesis  of  the  manifold  of  a  homo¬ 
geneous  intuition  in  general,  in  that  time  itself  is 
engendered  in  the  apprehension  of  the  intuition.” 

Thus  for  Kant  ‘‘unity  in  the  apprehension  of  a 
manifold”  and  “time,”  the  empirical  image  of  an 
a  priori  schema,  are  the  fundamentals  of  the  idea 
of  number.  We  shall  be  not  far  wrong  in  identify¬ 
ing  here  the  notions  of  unity,  multiplicity,  and  serial 
order,  which  are  primitive  with  Locke  and  are  un¬ 
evaded  by  the  logisticians.  But  Kant  puts  these 
notions  in  a  somewhat  new  light :  they  are  no  longer 
hloss  empirisch,  as  with  Locke,  nor  are  they  cir¬ 
cuitously  inferred  from  nominalistic  definitions; 
rather,  they  come  into  being  as  elements  of  that 
synthetic  activity  which  is  the  dominant  mark  of 
mind.  Number  is,  in  this  sense,  neither  empirical 
nor  quite  metempirical.  The  categories  of  the  un¬ 
derstanding  lie  behind  the  numerical  schema,  but 
the  schema  itself  is  “only  the  phenomenon  or  sensible 
concept  of  an  object  in  agreement  with  the  cat¬ 
egory.”  Further,  this  schema — as  indeed  are 
schemata  in  general — is  only  the  a  priori  determina¬ 
tion  of  temporal  intuitions,  getting  its  content  not 
through  analytic  but  through  aesthetic  transcenden- 
talities.  Indeed,  one  is  tempted  to  say  that  Kant, 
like  Plato,  puts  his  mathematical  realities  in  a  kind 
of  mid-realm  participating  at  once  in  vovs  and 
aL(T0r]<n<s. 

The  unique  position  of  the  number  idea  appears 
again  in  Kant’s  discussion  of  the  formation  of  de¬ 
terminate  numbers.  Judgments  of  numerical  rela- 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


345 


tions,  he  says,  are  certainly  a  priori  syntheses,  but 
they  are  not,  like  the  underlying  principles  of  geom¬ 
etry,  universal  in  character.  Accordingly,  they  are 
to  be  termed  number-formulas  (Zahl-formeln) ,  not 
axioms,  and  they  are  endless  in  number,  i.  e.,  as 
many  as  numbers  themselves.^®  Kant  conceives  the 
formative  judgments  as  synthetic  apprehensions  of 
aggregations  of  units.  In  their  generation  we  may 
make  use  of  sensible  intuitions,  as  in  computing 
by  aid  of  the  fingers,  but  the  actual  realization  of 
a  sum  would  be  impossible  apart  from  the  a  priori 
schema.  ^‘The  arithmetical  judgment  is  always 
synthetic,  as  may  the  better  appear  when  we  con¬ 
sider  the  larger  numbers;  for  it  is  then  clearly  evi¬ 
dent  that,  apply  our  concepts  as  we  will,  without 
the  help  of  intuition,  by  mere  conceptual  division 
into  elements,  we  can  never  discover  a  sum.”^® 
Couturat  retorts  upon  Kant  that  it  is  practically 
impossible  to  have  precise  and  complete  intuitions 
of  numbers  of  the  order  of  millions,  and  that  these 
could  never  be  calculated  exactly  if  recourse  to  in¬ 
tuition  were  necessary.  ^‘What  is  true  of  the  large 
numbers,”  he  continues,  “is  true  also  of  the  small, 
and  consequently  it  is  not  intuition  but  reason  that 
enables  us  to  say  that  2  and  2  make  4.”^^  Evi¬ 
dently  Couturat  overlooks  the  case  of  the  phenom¬ 
enal  calculator  who  handles  millions  as  the  average 
mortal  handles  units,  and  without  being  able  to 
analyze  the  process;  or  again,  the  undoubted  fact 
that  the  average  civilized  man  would  be  a  mathe¬ 
matical  prodigy  to  the  average  primitive.  And 
again,  it  is  not  easy  to  see  that  there  is  a  more 

25  d.  r.  V..  205-6. 

2aibid^  15-16. 

27  L.  Couturat,  Les  principes  des  math^matiques,  p.  256, 


Number 

formulas 


Couturat’ 

criticism 


346 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Kant’s 

masked 

empiricism 


Poincare 


excessive  dogmatism  in  assuming  that  our  intui¬ 
tions  of  the  great  numbers  are  in  character  with  our 
intuitions  of  the  small,  than  in  asserting  that  be¬ 
cause  we  have  no  intuitions  of  the  great  (supposing 
this  true)  we  can  therefore  have  none  of  the  small, — 
which  is  Couturat’s  position. 

Nevertheless,  there  is  justice  in  Couturat’s  criti¬ 
cisms,  especially  to  the  effect  that  Kant’s  notion  of 
‘‘number  formulas,”  calling  as  it  does  for  an  infin¬ 
ity  of  irreducible  synthetic  insights,  ill  conforms 
to  our  notion  of  rationality,  and  is,  indeed,  only  a 
masked  intrusion  of  the  old  empirical  view  of  num¬ 
ber.  The  difficulty  with  Kant’s  view  is  that  the 
number  syntheses  reduce  to  no  law,  and  this  offends 
our  sense  of  the  reasonable,  hyper-conscious  as  it 
is  when  touched  on  the  side  of  mathematics.  Kant’s 
a  priori  synthesis  is  after  all  only  a  designation,  and, 
as  Poincare  says,  to  christen  a  difficulty  is  not  to 
solve  it. 

Poincare’s  own  view — which  may  be  described  as 
Kantian  with  a  saving  salt  of  empiricism — is  an 
interesting  variation.  The  foundation  of  the  idea 
of  number  is  mathematical  induction,  and  the  es¬ 
sence  of  mathematical  induction  is  reasoning  by 
recurrence,  while  reasoning  by  recurrence  has  for 
its  proper  character  just  that  “it  contains,  as  it 
were  condensed  into  a  single  formula,  an  infinity 
of  syllogisms.”  Such  a  rule  cannot  come  to  us 
from  experience;  experience  can  show  it  to  hold 
for  a  limited  portion,  but  only  for  a  limited  por¬ 
tion,  of  the  endless  suite  of  numbers.  If  it  were  a 
matter  only  of  this  limited  portion  the  principle  of 
contradiction  would  suffice,  permitting  us  to  develop 
as  many  syllogisms  as  we  wish;  but  when  it  comes 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


347 


to  embracing  an  infinity  in  a  single  formula,  when 
the  infinite  is  in  question,  then  this  principle  fails, 
and  it  is  just  here  too  that  experience  is  impotent. 

The  rule  of  recurrence,  “inaccessible  alike  to  analytic 
demonstration  and  to  experience,  is  the  veritable 
type  of  the  synthetic  judgment  a  priori. 

Why,  then,  Poincare  asks,  does  such  a  form  of  The  mind’s 
judgment  impose  itself  upon  us  so  irresistibly?  “Be-  power 
cause  it  is  only  the  affirmation  of  the  power  of  the 
mind  which  knows  itself  capable  of  conceiving  the 
indefinite  repetition  of  an  act  once  this  act  is  found 
possible.  The  mind  has  a  direct  intuition  of  this 
power ;  experience  can  be  only  an  occasion  for  mak¬ 
ing  use  of  it  and  hence  of  becoming  conscious  of  it.” 

But  there  is  another  and  an  important  feature  of 
reasoning  by  recurrence  which  Poincare  emphasizes, 
and  this  is  the  inventive  character  of  its  judgments.  Inventive 
They  are  not  only  intuitive,  born  of  the  nature  of 
the  mind,  they  are  also  creative;  and  indeed  it  is 
mathematical  induction  alone  which  can  apprise  us 
of  the  new.  Each  number,  then,  is  to  be  looked 
upon  as  an  invention — not  due  to  physical  expe¬ 
rience,  but  a  self-discovery  of  the  mind.  But  in¬ 
vention  and  the  self-discovery  of  the  mind  do  not 
cease  so  long  as  life  lasts;  and  so,  says  Poincare  in 
another  connection,^^  “when  I  speak  of  all  the  whole 
numbers,  I  mean  by  that  all  the  whole  numbers  that 
have  been  discovered  and  will  one  day  be  discovered. 

.  .  .  .  And  it  is  just  this  possibility  of  discovery 
that  is  the  infinite.” 

28  1,0  science  et  Vhypothkse,  Chap.  I.  _  Cf.  p.  37:  “Nous  avons  la 
facult6  de  concevoir  qu’une  unit6  peut  etre  ajout^e  a  une  collection 
d’unit^s;  c’est  grace  a  I’exp^rience  que  nous  avons  I’occasion  d’exercer 
cette  faculty  et  que  nous  en  prenons  conscience:  mais,  d^s  ce  moment, 
nous  sentons  que  notre  pouvoir  n’a  pas  de  limite  et  que  nous  pourrions 
compter  ind^finiment,  quoique  nous  n’ayons  jamais  eu  a  compter  qu’un 
nombre  fini  d’objets.” 

20  DernUres  pensees,  p.  131. 


348 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Psycho¬ 

logical 

empiricism 


Bergson 


The  psychological  temper  of  this  view  is  ap¬ 
parent;  in  so  far  it  is  empirical.  But  the  validity 
of  mathematical  judgments  is  independent  of  the 
vagaries  of  experience;  it  is  derived  from  the  struc¬ 
ture  of  the  mind  rather  than  from  the  accidents  of 
a  conscious  life,  and  in  so  far  the  judgments  are 
a  priori  and  metempirical.  Whether  mathematical 
truths  represent  not  only  the  organization  of  mind 
but  also  the  organization  of  nature  is  an  epistemo¬ 
logical  question  for  which  Poincare  suggests  an 
interesting  answer,  but  it  is  properly  a  question, 
not  of  mathematics,  but  of  metaphysics. 

Analogous  to  Poincare’s  view  is  that  of  Bergson, 
which  also  must  be  regarded  as  Kantian  in  type. 
Bergson  begins  his  analysis  of  the  number  concept 
with  the  categories  of  unity  and  multiplicity :  every 
individual  number  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  ratio  be¬ 
tween  the  one  and  the  many,  unit  and  totality. 
^‘There  are  two  species  of  unity,”  writes  Bergson, 
^'the  one  definitive,  which  will  form  a  number  in 
adding  itself  to  itself;  the  other  provisional,  that 
of  this  number  which,  in  itself  multiple,  borrows 
its  unity  from  the  simple  act  by  which  the  intelli¬ 
gence  perceives  it.  And  it  is  undeniable  that  when 
we  image  to  ourselves  the  unitary  components  of 
the  number  we  believe  ourselves  to  be  thinking  of 
indivisibles,  this  belief  entering  as  a  considerable 
factor  in  the  notion  that  we  can  conceive  number 
apart  from  space.  In  every  case,  viewing  the  mat¬ 
ter  more  nearly,  we  shall  see  that  each  unity  is 
that  of  a  simple  act  of  the  mind,  and  that,  this 
act  consisting  in  uniting,  it  is  necessary  that  some 
multiplicity  serve  as  its  matter.” 


so  Les  donnSes  immSdiates  de  la  conscience,  pp.  58-65. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


349 


The  two  poles  of  the  idea  of  number,  unity  and 
multiplicity,  correspond  in  Bergson’s  view  to  the 
subjective  and  objective  elements  of  experience, — 
ultimately  and  respectively  to  time  and  space,  use 
and  generation.  “You  can  never  draw  from  an  idea 
which  you  have  constructed  more  than  you  have 
put  into  it,  and  if  the  unity  with  which  you  com¬ 
pose  your  number  is  the  unity  of  an  act  and  not 
of  an  object,  no  effort  of  analysis  can  evoke  from 
it  more  than  unity  pure  and  simple.  Without  doubt 
when  you  equate  the  number  3  to  the  sum  of 
1  +  1  +  1,  nothing  prevents  you  from  holding  as 
indivisible  the  units  which  compose  it,  but  this  is 
because  you  do  not  utilize  the  multiplicity  with 
which  each  of  these  units  is  big.  It  is,  moreover, 
probable  that  the  number  3  presents  itself  to  our 
mind  in  this  simple  form,  because  we  are  thinking 
rather  of  the  manner  in  which  we  obtained  it  than 
of  the  use  we  can  make  of  it.  But  we  ought  to 
see  that  if  all  multiplication  implies  the  possibility 
of  treating  any  number  soever  as  a  provisional  unity 
which  will  add  itself  to  itself,  inversely  the  units  in 
their  turn  are  veritable  numbers  as  great  as  one 
may  wish,  though  one  provisionally  assumes  them 
to  be  indecomposable  in  order  to  combine  them  inter 
se.  Moreover,  by  the  very  fact  that  the  possibility 
of  dividing  unity  into  as  many  parts  as  are  desired 
is  admitted  it  is  regarded  as  extended.”  In  fine: 
“What  properly  pertains  to  the  mind  is  the  in¬ 
divisible  process  by  which  it  fixes  attention  succes¬ 
sively  upon  the  diverse  parts  of  a  given  space;  but 
the  parts  thus  isolated  are  conserved  in  order  to  be 
added  to  others,  and  once  added  among  themselves 
they  are  open  to  a  new  decomposition  of  whatever 


Unity 
subjective ; 
multiplicity 
objective 


350 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Numbers 
are  ratios 


Bergsonian 

intuition 


sort.  They  are  then  parts  of  space,  and  space  is 
the  matter  with  which  the  mind  constructs  number, 
the  milieu  in  which  the  mind  places  it.” 

Thus  in  the  Bergsonian  view  numbers  are  ratios 
mediating  time  and  space.  The  order  in  which  they 
fall  is  first  of  all  the  order  in  which  achieved  expe¬ 
rience  presents  itself,  i.  e.,  it  is  spatial.  But  space- 
perceptions  are  all  provisional  in  character;  conse¬ 
quently  numbers  are  all  provisional  in  character. 
Numerical  order  is  not  continuous,  but  composed 
per  scdtum  ("‘par  sauts  brusques”)  ;  we  form  our 
numbers  turn  by  turn,  each  assuming  the  character 
of  a  mathematical  point  separated  by  an  interval  of 
space  from  the  point  following,  but  as  we  recede 
in  our  series  from  the  points  first  formed  these  tend 
to  unite  into  a  line,  their  synthesis  being  the  neces¬ 
sary  consequence  of  our  averted  attention.  But 
‘‘once  formed  according  to  a  determinate  law,  the 
number  is  decomposable  according  to  any  law  what¬ 
ever”;  and  here  we  reach  the  apparent  freedom 
and  apriority  of  the  mathematical  reason,  a  number 
in  course  of  formation  is  not  the  same  as  a  num¬ 
ber  once  formed;  it  is  only  the  latter  that  is  really 
divisible. 

Doubtless  to  minds  enamored  of  the  eternal,  Berg¬ 
son’s  view  will  seem  a  veritable  anarchy;  perhaps 
metaphysically  it  is  so;  but  it  can  hardly  be  denied 
that  it  gives  a  fair  description  of  the  manner  in 
which  we  actually  learn  and  apply  our  numbers, 
and  it  gives  also  an  intelligibility  to  the  old-fashioned 
notion  that  number  is  generated  by  successive  acts 
of  attention  which  the  old-fashioned  explanations 
do  not  possess.  This  is  due,  of  course,  to  the 
assumption  of  an  intuitive  reason,  differing  from 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


351 


Kant’s — as  does  Poincare’s — chiefly  in  its  more 
direct  reliance  upon  the  course  of  conscious  events, 
upon  psychology  conceived  as  mental  history. 

Nor  is  it  altogether  fanciful  to  see  in  Bergson’s 
view  a  striking  analogue  of  Plato’s.  Like  Plato  he 
conceives  number  as  essentially  a  ratio.  Like  Plato 
he  conceives  the  realm  of  numbers  as  a  median 
realm,  uniting  the  one  and  the  many,  participating 
in  the  one  direction  in  the  essential  unity  of  thought, 
in  the  other  expressing  itself  as  the  multiplicity  of 
things.  Number  is  the  category  which  unites  sub¬ 
jective  and  objective,  ideal  and  material, — or  in 
Bergsonian  terms,  time  and  space. 

VI 

The  types  of  definition  of  number  which  we  have 
been  considering  raise  certain  inevitable  issues — 
none  more  inevitable  than  the  question  of  the  rela¬ 
tion  of  psychology  to  logic,  and  of  both  these 
sciences  to  epistemology. 

If  we  contrast  the  older  empirical  conception  of 
number  with  the  logistic  view,  we  see  at  once  that 
the  former  defines  number  from  the  point  of  de¬ 
parture  of  number  genesis  while  the  latter  analyzes 
its  nature  irrespective  of  its  origins.  From  this  we 
may  guess  both  the  reason  for  the  dependence  of 
the  older  conception  upon  the  act  of  counting,  in  the 
definition  of  number,  and  the  reason  for  the  aversion 
to  counting  (for  their  denials  of  its  significance 
amounts  to  this)  on  the  part  of  the  logisticians. 
For  there  can  be  no  question  that,  historically  con¬ 
sidered,  the  invention  of  counting  is  the  beginning 
of  a  science  of  number;  nor  again,  that  a  study  of 
the  number-systems  of  primitive  peoples,  and  in- 


Bergson 
and  Plato 


Logic, 

Psychology, 

Episte¬ 

mology 


Genesis 

of 

number- 

concept 


352 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Uranian 

and 

Pandemian 

reason 


deed  of  the  civilized,  yield  a  direct  insight  into  the 
modes  in  which  numbers  are  thought.  The  psy¬ 
chology  of  number-consciousness  is,  therefore,  a 
direct  key  to  our  mathematical  use  of  numbers. 

But  is  there  another  and  more  efficient  key,  not 
perhaps  explaining  the  nature  of  our  consciousness 
of  numbers,  but  explaining  why  they  are  found  to 
be  applicable  to  experience  or  even  susceptible  of 
metempirical  developments?  To  this  question  the 
logisticians  respond  with  a  various  affirmative, 
“various”  because,  while  for  some  logistic  is  a  purely 
nominalistic  science  (or,  more  correctly,  purely 
algorithmic),  for  others  it  is  the  clue  to  a  realism 
transcending  the  fictions  which  impair  all  empiri¬ 
cally  originated  speech. 

It  must  be  owned  that  there  is  a  kind  of  expe¬ 
riential  warrant  for  each  of  these  views — the 
Uranian  as  well  as  the  Pandemian.  For  if  the 
latter  can  appeal  to  the  universal  conformity  of 
number  notions  in  process  of  formation,  to  our 
physical  and  mental  structure  and  needs,  the  Uran¬ 
ian  reason  can  retort  with  the  universal  and  seem¬ 
ingly  superhuman  validity  of  mathematics.  Mathe¬ 
matical  demonstrations  need  only  to  be  understood 
in  order  to  be  convincing,  and  if  there  be  such  a 
thing  as  infallibility  there  can  be  no  test  for  it  save 
this.  From  such  infallibility  the  Uranian  may  in¬ 
fer,  with  a  show  of  force,  that  number  is  not  the 
product  of  our  experience,  but  is  imposed  on  us  by 
the  structure  of  the  universe.  Mathematical  truth 
is,  at  all  events,  more  universal  than  anything  else 
we  know. 

But  this  is  a  doctrine,  not  of  logic,  but  of  epis¬ 
temology.  Uranians  do  not  like  the  word, — it  has 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


353 


psychological  associations.  They  prefer  to  mark 
their  own  science  as  at  once  hyper-psycholog-  mology 
ical,  hyper-epistemological,  hyper-logical — a  science 
which  can  have  no  name,  since  every  name  is  con¬ 
taminated  with  the  experiential  (humanly  expe¬ 
riential)  references  of  language.  They  aim  rather 
at  a  system  of  symbols  which  shall  be  untalkable, 
though  catholic  of  the  meanings  of  speech  as  well 
as  of  all  other  meanings  they  would  introduce  us 
into  a  sphere  where  human  relations  and  merely 
human  thinking  are  merged  into  the  crystalline 
structure  of  the  de-reified  reality  of  a  cosmos  tran¬ 
scending  speech. 

“Extravagant  realism”  is  the  only  historic  cap¬ 
tion  that  can  fit  this  point  of  view,  and  extravagant  Realfsm^^”^ 
realism  is  the  philosophical  creed  which  Russell  at 
least  is  ready  to  make  his  own.®^  That  some  ad¬ 
herents  of  the  movement  balk  at  this  is  no  matter 
of  surprise;  but  surely  it  is  with  ill  reason,  for  the 
philosophic  alternative  which  is  left  them  is  a  nom¬ 
inalism  without  even  the  consolations  of  speech. 

When  symbols  are  refined  to  such  an  extent  that 

they  are  but  the  symbols  of  systems  of  unutterable 

ideas,  whose  generality  outgeneralizes  nature,  then  Scepticism 

surely  their  inventors  are  worse  than  dumb;  they 

have  become  cousin-german  to  the  apostles  of  the 


81 1  can  imagine  no  more  downright  statement  of  the  point  of  view 
than  that  of  A.  Padoa  (Biblioth^que  du  Congrts  International  de  Philo- 
sophie,  1901,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  317f,).  Surely,  when  we  are  told  that  science 
is  the  peril  of  logic,  that  reasoning  in  order  to  be  safe  must  be  empty, 
we  may  well  draw  heretical  breaths! 

32  Cf.  Monist,  October,  1914;  and  Scientific  Method  in  Philosophy, 
pp.  200-202,  where  Russell  follows  Frege  (and  Plato)  in  postulating 
a  mathematical  tertium  quid,  a  reality  neither  mental  nor  physical,  at 
once  objective  and  non-sensible.  However,  this  reality  readily  fades 
into  the  ever-threatening  nominalism;  the  mathematicals  have  nothing 
to  do  with  history  or  things;  “nothing  that  can  be  said  significantly 
about  things,  i.  e.,  particulars,  can  be  said  about  classes  of  things,” — 
and  numbers  are  classes. 


354 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Moderate 

realism 


Merit  of 

neo-Kantian 

view 


flux,  and,  with  Cratylus,  nothing  is  left  them  but 
to  wag  impotent  digits. 

When  the  rigorous  following  out  of  the  mathe¬ 
matical  reason  leads  to  such  extreme  views,  we 
may  well  bear  in  mind  M.  Milhaud’s  caution  against 
a  too  naive  confidence  in  the  dogmatisms  of  our 
understanding.  We  may  well  ask  by  what  right 
(since  it  is  from  no  definable  experience)  transcen¬ 
dental  realism  justifies  its  ex  cathedra  affirmations; 
or,  with  Poincare,  what  value  is  to  be  attached  to 
a  symbolism  so  ineffable  that  no  testimony  of 
familiar  fact  can  sustain  it.  And  we  will  surely  be 
led  to  inquire  if  there  be  not  some  secure  middle 
way,  satisfying  at  once  to  our  reason  and  our  sense. 

Now  it  would  be  presumption  to  affirm  that  the 
Kantian  view — which  we  might  term  the  ^^moderate 
realism”  of  the  development — even  as  amended  by 
Poincare  and  Bergson  is  wholly  satisfying.  There 
are  unquietable  difficulties  besetting  every  relativism, 
and  these  become  accentuated  when  the  relativity  is 
between  such  extreme  factors  as  reason  and  sensi¬ 
bility.  It  is  far  more  comfortable  to  fashion  a 
shapely  abode  of  ideas  of  a  single  order  and  name 
it  intellect  than  to  be  faithful  to  all  the  factors  that 
enter  into  the  cognizable  world;  nevertheless,  it  is 
only  with  this  inclusive  faithfulness  at  once  to  fact 
and  to  reason  that  temperaments  of  a  certain  kind 
can  find  their  rest. 

Herein  is  the  merit  of  the  neo-Kantian  view.  It 
sees  the  crudities  of  the  old  naive  empiricism  quite 
as  clearly  as  do  the  logisticians;  but  for  all  that  it 
is  unwilling  to  abandon  empirical  leadings  or  to 
deny  the  centrality  of  our  human  experience,  for 
mathematical  as  for  all  other  meanings.  Indeed, 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


355 


it  asks,  and  asks  fairly,  of  the  logisticians  by  what 
right  they  assume  that  the  numbers  and  measures 
that  tell  and  mete  the  physical  world  are  only  illus¬ 
trative  cases  to  be  subsumed  under  some  cosmic 
Number,  super-human  and  supra-mundane.  Why, 
for  example,  is  “the  suite  of  natural  numbers,”  so 
named,  and  why  made  the  model  for  the  concep¬ 
tualization  of  all  other  series,  if  it  be  not  due  to 
some  greater  intimacy  of  nature  which  number  has 
with  this  suite  than  with  the  others? 

Referring  to  the  arithmetical  definition  of  con¬ 
tinuity  Poincare  says  “This  definition  makes  a 
ready  disposal  of  the  intuitive  origin  of  the  notion 
of  continuity,  and  of  all  the  riches  which  this  notion 
conceals.  It  returns  to  the  type  of  those  defini¬ 
tions — so  frequent  in  mathematics  since  the  ten¬ 
dency  to  arithmetize  this  science — definitions  mathe¬ 
matically  sound,  but  philosophically  unsatisfying. 
They  replace  the  objects  to  be  defined  and  the  in¬ 
tuitive  notion  of  this  object  by  a  construction  made 
of  simpler  materials;  one  sees  indeed  that  one  can 
effectively  make  this  construction  with  these  mate¬ 
rials,  but  one  sees  also  that  one  can  make  many 
others.  What  is  not  to  be  seen  is  the  deeper  reason 
why  one  assembles  these  materials  in  just  this,  and 
not  in  another  fashion.”  And  again  “Among 
all  the  constructions  that  one  can  make  with  the 
materials  furnished  by  logic,  a  choice  must  be  made; 
the  true  geometer  makes  this  choice  judiciously  be¬ 
cause  he  is  guided  by  a  sure  instinct,  or  by  some 
vague  consciousness  of  I  know  not  what  geometry 
more  profound  and  more  hidden,  which  alone  makes 
the  value  of  the  edifice  built.”  This  was  surely  also 


Natural 

numbers 


The 

deeper 

reason 


^  D emigres  pensies,  p.  65.  Science  et  mSthode,  p.  158. 


356 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Pascal 
on  the 
geometric 
mind 


The 

problem  of 
philosophy 


Pascal’s  point  {De  V esprit  geonietrique)  where  he 
justifies  the  axiomatic  foundations  of  geometry  by 
the  very  fact  that  they  are  clearer  than  definition, — 
which  can  but  yield  the  crude  nominalism  of  com¬ 
munication.  Geometry  is  concerned  “only  with  the 
simplest  things ;  that  very  quality  which  makes 
them  worthy  of  being  its  objects  renders  them 
incapable  of  definition;  so  that  the  lack  of  defi¬ 
nition  is  rather  a  perfection  than  a  defect,  for  it 
comes  not  from  their  obscurity  but  from  their 
extreme  evidence.”  The  relation  of  the  “natural” 
numbers  to  human  nature  and  to  the  nature  of 
things  is  doubtless  of  the  same  elemental  kind;  it 
is,  at  least,  psychologically  obvious,  and  is  guided, 
as  Poincare  indicates,  by  an  intellectual  instinct. 
Of  course,  to  reverse  Pascal’s  aphorism,  a  man 
might  readily  be  a  “good  geometer”  in  the  formal 
mode  and  still  not  turn  out  to  be  the  “tres-habile” 
man,  instinctively  gifted  to  see  this. 

There  is  a  sense,  as  we  have  said,  in  which  the 
world  is  all  possible  worlds;  but  there  is  a  com¬ 
moner  and  more  valuable  sense  according  to  which 
the  world  we  call  real  is  only  one  among  many 
possible  worlds.  The  problem  at  once  of  philosophy 
and  of  all  rational  life  is  to  tell  us  just  what  this 
unique  reality  is,  why  the  materials  of  creation  have 
been  assembled  in  just  this,  and  not  in  another 
fashion.^® 


85  This  is  the  problem  which  Russell,  as  his  own  profession  of 
philosophic  faith,  formally  repudiates.  Neither  mathematics  nor  philos¬ 
ophy,  he  avers,  “asserts  propositions  which,  like  those  of  history  and 
geography,  depend  upon  the  actual  concrete  facts  being  just  what  they 
are.  .  .  Any  quality,  therefore,  by  which  our  actual  world  is  dis¬ 
tinguished  from  other  abstractly  possible  worlds,  must  be  imored  by 
mathematics  and  philosophy  alike."— -Scientific^  Method^  in  Philosophy, 
p.  186.  ^  So  far  as  philosophy  is  concerned,  its  historical  content  re¬ 
futes  this:  its  problems  began  with  astronomy  and  physics  and  have 
vastly  revolved  about  questions  of  man’s  actual  destinies.  As  for 
mathematics,  its  arithmetic  is  au  fond  the  digits  of  our  limbs,  its 
geometry  their  motions. 


THE  DEFINITION  OF  NUMBER 


357 


Both  Poincare  and  Bergson  recognize  in  mathe¬ 
matical  reasoning  a  power  or  enterprise  of  the  spirit 
which  is  in  some  sense  prior  to  experience.  It  is  in 
this  that  they  are  Kantians.  This  power,  or  intui¬ 
tion  as  they  agree  in  calling  it,  gives  to  mathe¬ 
matical  truths  their  sanctioning  validity.  But  the 
validity  of  mathematics  is  not  supposed,  as  with 
the  logisticians,  to  derive  from  a  firmament  above 
the  firmament;  it  holds  only  within  the  ranges  of 
human  insight,  and  indeed  it  is  the  definition  of  the 
utmost  reach  of  this  insight.  “When  I  speak  of  all 
the  whole  numbers,  I  mean  by  that  all  the  whole 
numbers  that  have  been  discovered  and  will  one 
day  be  discovered.  .  .  .  And  it  is  just  this  possi¬ 
bility  of  discovery  that  is  the  infinite,”  says  Poin¬ 
care.  If  I  read  Bergson  aright,  I  judge  his  concep¬ 
tion  of  the  unity  of  living  time,  within  which  num¬ 
ber  is  generated  in  the  perception  of  differences,  to 
be  not  radically  divergent  from  Poincare’s  meaning; 
and  certainly  their  common  view  squares  with  the 
kind  of  interpretation  which  language  can  give  of 
number,  and  which  the  ordinarily  thoughtful  intelli¬ 
gence  can  accept. 

Nor  do  I  hesitate  to  add  that  its  metaphysical 
implications  are  rich  and  profound.  For  a  view 
of  number  which,  while  holding  it  within  the  leash 
of  human  experience  makes  of  it  the  measure  of 
our  expectation  of  life,  is  surely  sufficiently  gran¬ 
diose  for  any  imagination,  if  it  seem  to  make  that 
expectation  infinite.  The  intuition  which  gives  the 
sanction  becomes  the  testimony  to  a  truth  in  num¬ 
ber  transcending  the  facts  to  which  it  is  applied — 
that  is,  the  little  range  of  life  here  present — though 
not  transcending  the  possibilities  of  real  experience. 

24 


Intuition 

in 

mathe¬ 

matics 


Meta¬ 

physical 

implications 


358 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Truth 

transcending 

fact 


Plato  found  in  mathematical  intuitions  recollections 
from  a  previous  life  of  the  intelligence,  Bergson 
and  Poincare  treat  them  rather  as  prophecies  of 
life  to  come;  but  these  are  only  variations  of  a 
common  doctrine. 


X.  PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE 

COSMOS 

I 


“T^YTHAGORAS  was  the  first,”  says  Plutarch, 

‘‘who  named  the  compass  of  the  whole  a 
Cosmos,  because  of  the  order  which  is  in  it.” 

The  notion  that  all  things  knowable  and  all  things  of 
existent  form  one  orderly  and  comprehensive  sys-  World 
tern,  in  which  every  event  is  linked  with  every  other 
by  causal  necessity  while  all  the  elements  with 
mechanical  nicety  mutually  enmesh,  is  to  us  of  today 
an  intellectual  commonplace.  We  make  no  difficulty 
in  thinking  an  Everything  which  is  made  up  of  all 
things,  an  Entirety  or  a  Totality  which  is  just  the 
commingled  sum  of  the  numberless  particularities 
which  our  lives  are  always  itemizing;  and  we  call 
this  Totality,  this  All,  this  Thing  of  things,  the 
Universe  or  the  World.  It  rarely  occurs  to  us  to  Thing 
question  either  the  unity  or  the  reality  of  this  things 
omnium-gatherum,  which,  even  if  it  occupies  a 
somewhat  concealed  position  in  our  thoughts,  is  yet 
a  well-nigh  indispensable  convenience;  it  stands  an 
ever-ready  and  capacious  receptacle  for  all  the  per¬ 
plexities  and  inconsistencies  which  the  apparent 
nature  of  things  is  constantly  presenting,  but  which, 
we  feel,  are  in  some  benign  way  healed  by  the 
alchemical  mystery  of  an  all-inclusive  World. 

Ideas  are  habits;  and  when  an  idea  gets  so  fixed 
that  the  habit  has  become  automatic,  it  is  usually 
good  medicine  to  revive,  now  and  again  the  habit- 

359 


360 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Greek 

epithets 


Pythagoras 


forming  period,  that  we  may  judge  with  refreshed 
intelligence  the  safety  and  truth  of  our  continued 
course.  This  is  our  purpose  in  turning  to  certain 
Greek  conceptions  of  the  world  as  a  cosmos. 

For  we  must  remember  that  the  notion,  so 
familiar  to  us,  of  what  they  variously  called  to  Trav, 
the  All,  or  to  oAov,  the  Whole,  or  again  6  ovpavo^^  the 
Heaven,  or  o  koo-/xo9,  the  Order  of  Things,  was  to  the 
Greeks  a  new  invention.  The  idea  that  all  things 
are  somehow  one  is  by  no  means  self-evident,  and 
when  it  was  suggested  the  wary  Hellenic  mind  ap¬ 
proached  it  with  canny  suspicion  and  cautious  cir¬ 
cumlocution.  Is  the  World  limited  or  unlimited? 
Is  it  truly  One  or  is  it  Many?  Does  the  Whole,  or 
Totality  exhaust  the  All?  Or  indeed  may  not  the 
All  indefinitely  transcend  the  Realm  of  Order,  the 
Cosmos?  These  were  questions  which  were  raised 
and  discussed — questions  with  a  dangerous  smack 
of  impiety — ^by  the  men  who  were  interested  in  what 
Xenophon  characterizes  as  ‘^that  which  is  called  by 
sophists  'the  world.'  " 

Doubtless  it  was  Pythagoras,  as  Plutarch  states, 
or  some  Pythagorean,  who  first  daringly  pronounced 
the  Whole  to  be  a  Cosmos,  the  realm  of  reality  and 
the  realm  of  order  to  be  co-extensive.  For  the 
Pythagoreans  were  the  earliest  of  men  to  be  entirely 
enamored  of  that  first  principle  and  foundation  of 
law  and  order,  the  idea  of  number.  They  devoted 
themselves  to  mathematics  and  music  and  astron¬ 
omy,  and  in  the  numerical  analogies  which  they 
discovered  in  the  properties  of  sound  and  in  the 
movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  there  burst  upon 
their  minds,  with  what  must  have  seemed  a  very 
blaze  of  creative  intelligence,  the  great  conception 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


361 


of  number  in  nature,  which  has  since  been  the 
foundation  of  all  our  science.  They  conceived  all 
nature  to  be  organized  according  to  mathematical 
proportions,  and  because  they  found  these  propor¬ 
tions  to  be  most  emblematically  realized  in  m.usical 
strings  and  pipes  they  named  the  principle  of  it  a 
harmony,  and  again  because  they  seemed  to  see  it 
regnantly  imaged  in  the  motions  of  the  heavenly 
spheres  they  regarded  these  too  as  a  harmony  and 
a  music.  It  was  indeed  primarily  to  the  heavens 
that  the  name  Cosmos  was  given,  and  it  was  only 
later,  when  the  seasons  of  Earth  were  observed  to 
follow  the  periods  of  the  Sun  while  the  figures 
of  the  stars  were  regarded  as  prognostics  of  human 
events,  that  the  conception  of  order  was  extended 
from  celestial  to  terrestrial  phenomena. 

The  background  of  Hellenic  thought,  like  the 
natural  thought  of  mankind  everywhere,  was  plural¬ 
istic.  To  the  normal  Greek,  even  in  the  days  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle,  the  obvious  facts  of  life  in¬ 
dicated  not  a  consistent  and  close-locked  universal 
scheme,  but  a  melee  of  whim  and  purpose,  blind 
chance  and  blinder  fancy,  while  the  most  reasonless 
of  all  the  powers  he  recognized  was  that  to  which 
he  gave  the  name  Necessity.  To  him  it  seemed 
evident  that  the  affairs  of  men  and  nature  are  in¬ 
numerable  and  unorganized,  and  while  certain  of 
the  more  stable  aspects  of  existence  were  regarded 
as  the  charge  of  the  Olympian  gods,  not  even  such 
mercurial  control  as  emanated  from  the  hoydenish 
family  of  Zeus  divine  obtained  in  the  generality  of 
experience;  the  vast  majority  of  events  were  not 
to  be  explained  at  all;  they  were  simply  the  mani¬ 
festation  of  the  hostility,  indifference,  idiosyncracy 


Number 
in  Nature 


Mythic 

pluralism 


362 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Unity 
a  form  of 
thought 


Nature’s 

opposites 


and  anarchy  which  appear  in  the  elemental  facts 
of  life. 

This,  I  say,  was  the  view  of  the  normal  Greek 
even  in  his  classical  hey-dey,  as  it  is  the  view  of 
the  naive  and  natural  man  everywhere.  But  the 
foundations  of  our  own  sophisticated  philosophy 
had  been  set  long  before,  in  two  first  conditions 
which,  as  I  see  it,  go  far  to  account  for  the  whole 
edifice  of  reason. 

One  of  these  is  a  psychological  condition.  It  is 
what  is  known  in  Kantian  philosophy  as  the  ‘‘unity 
of  apperception”  and  in  scientific  method  as  the 
“law  of  parcimony,”  or  economy  of  thought.  Es¬ 
sentially  it  is  just  our  native  simple-mindedness,  ex¬ 
pressed  in  the  maxim,  “Attend  to  one  thing  at  a 
time.”  Intellectually  we  are  unable  to  cope  with 
complex  facts;  we  have  to  simplify  them,  analyze 
them,  in  order  to  see  them.  Hence  we  regard  sim¬ 
plicity  as  the  supreme  virtue,  not  only  in  reason  but 
also  in  nature;  and  hence  also  our  invincible  con¬ 
viction  that  reason’s  simplifications  are  more  genuine 
than  nature’s  empirical  complexities.  In  spite  of 
its  multitudinous  and  multiplying  variety  the  very 
limitations  of  our  intellectual  powers  compel  us  to 
see  Nature  as  one,  as  a  unity,  and  thus  out  of  chaos 
is  created  an  orderly  world. 

Such  is  the  inner  condition,  but  it  is  mightily 
helped  outwardly  by  the  natural  allegory  of  Sky 
and  Earth,  Day  and  Night,  Summer  and  Winter. 
These  antithetical  seem  to  form  a  great  division  of 
Nature  into  the  Intelligible  and  the  Unintelligible; 
Sky  and  Day  and  Summer  not  only  symbolize  but 
embody  motion  and  light  and  life,  which  are  in 
turn  the  image  and  essence  of  reason;  while  Earth 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS  363 

and  Night  and  Winter  no  less  surely  body  forth 
the  inert  and  void  and  deathly  realm  of  anti-reason. 
Thus  we  have  a  realm  of  order,  Cosmos,  set  over 
against  a  realm  of  disorder,  a  Chaos;  and  because 
the  orderly  Sky  images  the  rulership  of  reason,  and 
because  Day  is  the  revealer  and  Summer  the  life- 
giver,  these  powers  are  regarded  as  friendly  to  man 
and  in  the  great  contention  of  Nature  as  encroach¬ 
ing  upon  and  subduing  the  dark  forces  of  Chaos. 

Such  a  sense  of  duality  is  omnipresent  in  human 
thought.  Its  metaphors  are  the  very  breath  of  life 
of  poetry,  and  even  in  philosophies  which  deny  its 
reality  the  problems  to  which  it  gives  rise — problems 
of  the  formal  and  material,  spiritual  and  physical, 
good  and  evil, — are  the  crucial  perplexities.  Greek 
thought  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Already  in  the 
epic  theogonies  Uranus  and  Gaea,  Sky  and  Earth, 
appear  as  ancestral  and  gigantic  forms  of  creation 
emerging  from  primeval  chaos.  .  . 

“First  Chaos  was,  and  then  broad-bosomed  Earth  .  .  . 

And  Earth  bare  starry  Heaven,  thence  to  be 
The  habitation  of  the  blessed  gods.” 

This  is  the  Hesiodic  genesis,  and  the  Orphic  differs 
from  it  only  in  making  Heaven  and  Earth  a  co¬ 
equal  and  wedded  pair,  from  whose  union  multi¬ 
tudinous  nature  was  begotten.  Euripides  preserves 
it  in  the  utterance  of  the  seeress  Melanippe: 

“It  is  not  my  word,  but  my  mother’s  word, 

How  Heaven  and  Earth  were  once  one  form;  but  stirred, 
And  strove,  and  dwelt  asunder  far  away: 

And  then,  re-wedding,  bore  unto  the  day 
And  light  of  life  all  things  that  are,  the  trees. 

Flowers,  birds  and  beasts  and  them  that  breathe  the  seas. 
And  mortal  man,  each  in  his  kind  and  law.”  ^ 


Poetic 

dualities 


Hesiod 


Euripides 


1  Gilbert  Murray’s  translation. 


364 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Early 

cosmology 


Astronomy 


TimceUrS,  40 


This  dualism  of  the  epic  age  passed  over  into  the 
philosophic  tradition  with  little  more  than  a  change 
of  names.  In  place  of  Heaven  and  Earth,  the 
antithesis  is  set  between  Chaos  and  Nous,  Anarchy 
and  Intelligence,  or  between  Chaos  and  Cosmos, 
Void  and  Order, — though  we  must  remember  that 
the  word  ovpavo?  persisted  as  a  synonym  of  Koafios 
even  with  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  that  koct/aos  itself 
was  at  first  used  of  the  heavenly  firmament,  and  only 
with  advancing  insight  into  the  orderliness  of  the 
world  beneath  the  spheres  was  it  made  to  include 
terrene  nature. 

The  lesson  of  intelligence  was  in  fact  learned  first 
of  all  from  observation  of  the  heavens.  No  phe¬ 
nomena  so  vividly  impress  the  natural  mind  with 
a  sense  of  their  divinity  as  do  the  regular  and 
brilliant  courses  of  the  heavenly  bodies.  Repetition 
is  the  gateway  and  light  is  the  outer  image  of  learn¬ 
ing,  and  in  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars  we  have  our 
permanent  exemplars  of  repetition  and  light. 

“All  mankind  thou  guidest  as  a  single  being; 

Expectantly,  with  raised  head,  they  look  up  to  thee  1“ 

says  a  Babylonian  hymn  to  the  sun,  for  which  the 
nineteenth  psalm — 

“The  Heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God, 

And  the  firmament  sheweth  his  handywork” — 

is  only  a  later  parallel.  Plato,  in  describing  the 
works  of  the  Demiurge,  tells  how  “of  the  heavenly 
and  divine,  he  created  the  greater  part  out  of  fire, 
that  they  might  be  the  brightest  of  all  things  and 
fairest  to  behold,  and  he  fashioned  them  after  the 
likeness  of  the  universe  in  the  figure  of  a  circle, 
and  made  them  follow  the  intelligent  motion  of 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


365 


the  supreme,  distributing  them  over  the  whole  cir¬ 
cumference  of  heaven,  which  was  to  be  a  true 
cosmos  or  glorious  world  spangled  with  them  all 
over.”  And  in  another  passage  Plato  derives  from 
the  image  of  the  heavens,  as  does  the  psalmist,  his 
conviction  of  the  goodness  of  God :  for  if,  he  says, 
‘‘we  say  that  the  whole  path  and  movement  of 
heaven,  and  of  all  that  is  therein,  is  by  nature  akin 
to  the  movement  and  revolution  and  calculation  of 
mind,  and  proceeds  by  kindred  laws,  then,  as  is 
plain,  we  must  say  that  the  best  soul  takes  care  of 
the  world  and  guides  it  along  the  good  path.”  Per¬ 
haps  the  sublimest  expression  of  this  thought  in 
Greek  literature  is  Aristotle’s  characterization  of 
Xenophanes:  “He  cast  his  eyes  upon  the  expanse 
of  Heaven,  and  saw  that  it  was  one,  and  that  one 
God.” 

Thus  the  heavens  were  at  once  the  embodiment 
of  reason  and  divinity,  the  symbol  of  divine  ruler- 
ship  and  the  exemplar  of  divine  perfection.  But  it 
was  the  reverse  of  obvious  that  either  the  mathe¬ 
matical  regularity  of  the  heavenly  reason  or  the 
perfection  of  heavenly  form  extend  to  the  world 
beneath  the  moon.  What  seems  to  have  been  really 
the  first  suggestion  that  such  is  the  case  was  the 
Pythagorean  discovery  that  musical  intervals  vary 
with  the  length  of  the  sound-producing  strings  ac¬ 
cording  to  certain  simple  and  regular  numerical 
ratios.  This  discovery  burst  upon  men’s  minds  as 
a  sudden  revelation  of  order  where  order  had 
hitherto  never  been  suspected,  and  in  their  first  delir¬ 
ious  application  of  it  the  Pythagoreans  seemed  to  see 
numbers  everywhere,  in  the  world  of  change  below 
as  in  the  world  of  constancy  above,  in  the  conduct 


Celestial 

order 


Xenophanes 


Musical 

intervals 


366 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Symbolic 

universe 


Heraclitus 


of  men  as  in  the  conduct  of  gods  and  stars,  and  so 
they  proclaimed  the  Whole  to  be  a  One,  whose 
emanating  numbers  gave  coherence  and  system  to 
all  things,  and  they  named  this  systemic  All  a 
Cosmos. 

There  remained  one  further  step.  Xenophanes 
had  seen  God  in  the  heavens;  Pythagoras  had  lifted 
Earth  up  into  the  Cosmos;  but  neither  had  as  yet 
perceived  that  the  world  of  sense  and  of  physical 
numbers  is  only  a  symbol  and  an  image  of  the  true 
realm  of  law,  that  the  cosmic  citadel  must  be  sought 
inwardly  in  thought  and  not  outwardly  in  fact.  This 
had  been  darkly  intimated  by  the  dark  Heraclitus. 
‘‘Better  is  the  hidden  harmony  than  the  manifest,” 
he  had  said;  and  again,  “In  one  thing  is  wisdom, 
to  know  the  reason  by  which  all  through  all  is 
guided.”  But  it  was  Socrates  who  first  clearly  and 
explicitly  emphasized  the  inner  nature  of  the  cosmic 
principle.  “Socrates  was  the  first,”  says  Cicero, 
“to  call  philosophy  down  from  the  sky,  and  to  settle 
it  in  the  city  and  even  introduce  it  within  the  house, 
and  compel  it  to  inquire  concerning  life  and  death 
and  things  good  and  ill.”  Probably,  in  saying  this, 
Cicero,  like  Xenophon,  merely  saw  Socrates  turn¬ 
ing  from  astronomy  as  from  a  vain  speculation. 
The  truth  of  Socrates’  mission  is  perhaps  better 
indicated  by  Aristotle’s  statement  that  it  was 
Metaphysics,  Socrates  who  invented  definition.  We  know  what 
he  strove  to  define^ — courage  and  temperance  and 
justice  and  wisdom,  the  principles  of  conduct  and 
the  laws  of  an  orderly  life.  Socrates  was  seeking 
cosmos,  reason,  not  in  the  physical  image,  but  in 
the  spiritual  reality.  That  Socrates  was  genuinely 
interested  in  physical  science  there  is  every  reason 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


367 


to  believe,  but  his  final  attitude  is  best  expressed  in 
the  words  which  Plato  puts  into  his  mouth,  ^‘Those 
who  elevate  astronomy  into  philosophy  appear  to  me 
to  make  us  look  downward  and  not  upward.” 

The  predecessors  of  Plato  had  modelled  two 
great  conceptions.  The  physical  and  mathematical 
thinkers  had  evolved  the  grandiose  notion  of  a 
Cosmos,  an  Order,  written  upon  the  face  of  Chaos. 
Heraclitus  and,  far  more  distinctly,  Socrates  had 
proclaimed  this  order  of  nature  to  be  only  outward 
image  and  reflection  of  the  inner  order  of  reason. 
Pythagoras  and  Heraclitus  and  Socrates,  more  than 
all  others,  were  the  teachers  of  Plato,  and  it  was 
from  the  inspirations  of  their  insights  that  he  drew 
his  own  magnificent  vision  of  the  world. 

II 

The  vivid  impression  one  derives  from  a  reading 
of  Plato  is  of  the  intensity  of  his  conviction  of  the 
unreality  of  sensible  things.  The  world  of  sense, 
of  sight  and  hearing  and  taste  and  touch,  in  which 
most  men  chiefly  dwell  is  for  him  a  shadow  world. 
At  its  best  it  is  but  a  symbol  obscurely  imitating  the 
character  of  the  reality  which  it  veils ;  in  its  normal 
function  it  is  a  delusional  mirage;  and  at  its  worst, 
when  it  conveys  the  deception  of  knowledge,  it  is 
the  fount  of  corruption  and  the  seed  of  damnation. 
The  Greek  argument  against  our  commonsense  con¬ 
viction  that  what  we  see  and  touch  is  real  is  about 
as  follows:  All  objects  of  sense  suffer  perpetual 
change;  they  never  are  this  or  that,  but  are  always 
in  a  process  of  becoming  or  of  ceasing  to  be  this 
or  that;  hence,  we  cannot  justly  describe  them  as 
being  anything,  or  indeed  as  having  any  true  exist- 


Plato’s 

teachers 


Unreality 
of  sense 


368 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Scepticism 


Knowledge 

through 

reason 


ence  of  any  sort.  Heraclitus  remarked  that  one 
cannot  bathe  in  the  same  river  twice,  and  Cratylus, 
the  sceptic,  after  remarking  that  we  cannot  in  fact 
bathe  in  the  same  river  even  once,  finally,  as  Aris¬ 
totle  tells  us,  ceased  speech  altogether  on  the  ground 
that  it  was  impossible  to  say  anything  that  is  true; 
to  inquisitors  he  would  reply  merely  by  a  wagging 
of  the  finger,  his  mutely  eloquent  asseveration  of 
his  master’s  dogma  that  *‘A11  things  flow.”  Plato 
accepted  this  doctrine,  as  he  also  accepted  Socrates’s 
conception  that  ignorance  is  essential  vice,  and  com¬ 
bining  the  two,  to  the  sceptical  he  added  a  moral 
condemnation  of  the  world  of  sense;  not  only  does 
it  not  give  us  truth,  but  because,  as  he  says,  “igno¬ 
rance  is  the  aberration  of  a  mind  bent  on  truth,” 
through  the  intensity  of  its  illusions  it  betrays  the 
soul’s  integrity. 

The  Cratylean  denial  of  the  possibility  of  dis¬ 
course  is  thus,  for  Plato,  the  proclamation  of  moral 
ruin,  and  at  such  his  sanity  revolts.  Nor  is  the 
way  of  salvation  hard  to  find.  If  sense  be  false, 
ideas  may  yet  be  true,  and  in  its  own  proper  world 
discourse  may  be  dealing  with  reality.  “Knowl¬ 
edge” — these  are  Plato’s  words — “does  not  consist 
in  impressions  of  sense,  but  in  reasoning  about  them; 
in  that  only,  and  not  in  the  mere  impression,  truth 
and  being  can  be  obtained.”  And  again :  “Things 
of  which  there  is  no  rational  account  are  not  know- 
able;  .  .  .  things  which  have  a  reason  or  explana¬ 
tion  are  knowable.”  Plato’s  “world  of  Ideas,”  as 
it  is  called,  is  in  fact  but  the  assertion  that  our 
speech  is  significant,  and  that  this  significance,  not 
the  courses  of  sense,  is  what  we  mean  by  reality. 
“The  word  expresses  more  than  the  fact,”  and  “in 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


369 


the  nature  of  things  the  actual  must  always  fall 
short  of  the  truth.” 

Platons  idealism  is  thus  simply  a  sane  and  un¬ 
conquerable  conviction  that  there  is  a  realm  of  truth, 
and  his  whole  philosophy  is  an  effort  to  find  out 
this  truth.  In  the  Phcedrus  he  speaks  of  truth  as 
“the  pilot  of  the  soul”;  in  the  Philebus  he  asserts 
that  the  soul  has  “a  power  or  faculty  of  loving  truth 
and  of  doing  all  things  for  the  sake  of  it”;  and  in 
the  Phcudo  he  makes  Socrates,  about  to  take  the 
hemlock,  preface  his  great  argument  for  the  soul’s 
immortality  with  a  wise  caution  against  the  bias  of 
desire,  “I  would  ask  you  to  be  thinking  of  the  truth 
and  not  of  Socrates.” 

Yet  Plato  has  no  illusory  notion  that  truth  is  of 
easy  access.  Immersed  as  we  are  in  a  sea  of  dis¬ 
torting  sensation,  our  knowledge  at  its  best  is  only 
a  faith.  “For  there  is  no  light  of  justice  or  tem¬ 
perance  or  any  of  the  higher  ideas  which  are  precious 
to  souls  in  the  earthly  copies  of  them :  they  are  seen 
through  a  glass  darkly.”  In  the  famous  image  of 
the  den,  wherein  mankind  are  the  chained  prisoners, 
with  their  eyes  fixed  upon  the  shadows  of  reality, 
Plato  reminds  us  that  even  were  our  eyes  opened 
to  the  upper  world  the  light  of  reality  would  sear 
our  vision.  All  that  we  can  hope  for  is  such  intima¬ 
tions  of  the  truth  as  we  can  gather  from  the  allegory 
of  nature. 

And  with  a  curious  astuteness  he  emphasizes  the 
affinity  of  vision — “the  clearest  aperture  of  sense” — 
to  the  inner  perception  of  truth.  “Sight  in  my 
opinion,”  says  Timaeus,  “is  the  source  of  the  greatest 
benefit  to  us,  for  had  we  never  seen  the  stars  and 
the  sun  and  the  heavens,  none  of  the  words  which 


Plato’s 

idealism 


Truth 


Metaphor 
of  vision 


I 


370  NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 

we  have  spoken  about  the  universe  would  ever  have 
been  uttered.  But  now  the  sight  of  day  and  night, 
Timcsus,  47  and  the  months  and  the  revolutions  of  the  years, 
have  created  number,  and  have  given  us  a  concep¬ 
tion  of  time,  and  the  power  of  inquiring  about  the 
nature  of  the  universe;  and  from  this  source  we 
have  derived  philosophy,  than  which  no  greater  good 
ever  was  or  will  be  given  by  the  gods  to  mortal 

man . God  invented  and  gave  us  sight  to  the 

end  that  we  might  behold  the  courses  of  intelligence 
in  the  heavens,  and  apply  them  to  the  courses  of 
our  own  intelligence  which  are  akin  to  them,  the 
unperturbed  to  the  perturbed ;  and  that  we,  learning 
them  and  partaking  of  the  natural  truth  of  reason, 
might  imitate  the  absolutely  unerring  courses  of 
God  and  regulate  our  own  vagaries.’’ 

History  In  this  remarkable  passage  Plato  compresses  not 

of  science  actual  history  of  science,  but  its  psycho¬ 

logical  foundations  and  its  metaphysical  ends,  with 
a  precision  truly  astonishing.  I  cannot  dwell  upon 
the  multitude  of  analogies  that  it  suggests,  but  the 
fundamentals  are  obvious;  for  the  sense  of  sight 
is  in  fact  the  pattern  of  intelligence;  perception  of 
the  heavens  has  given  us  our  measures  of  time,  and 
has  created  number  and  the  science  of  the  calendar 
which  is  the  parent  of  all  the  sciences  and  of  philos¬ 
ophy  as  well;  and  again  the  constancies  of  the  celes¬ 
tial  bodies  have  ever  seemed  to  men,  as  Plato  says, 
the  regulation  and  the  healing  of  their  own  errant 
ways.  The  whole  life  of  reason  is  summarized  and 
prophesied  in  this  natural  allegory. 

And  yet,  let  us  repeat,  it  remains  for  Plato 
throughout  an  allegory.  All  science  is  an  allegory 
and  an  art.  What  men  call  nature,  the  experiences 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


371 


that  in  human  life  stand  over  against  our  essential 
humanity,  is  after  all  unreal.  It  may  image  reality 
because  it  is  the  product  of  creative  reason,  but 
beyond  this  power  of  imaging  its  only  being  is 
scenic  and  mirage-like. 

^‘The  starry  heaven  which  we  behold  is  wrought 
upon  a  visible  ground,  and  therefore,  although  the 
fairest  and  most  perfect  of  visible  things  must  neces¬ 
sarily  be  deemed  inferior  far  to  the  true  motions 
of  absolute  swiftness  and  absolute  slowness,  which 
are  relative  to  each  other,  and  carry  with  them  that 
which  is  contained  in  them,  in  the  true  number  and 
in  every  figure.  Now,  these  are  to  be  apprehended 

by  reason  and  intelligence,  but  not  by  sight . 

The  spangled  heavens  should  be  used  as  a  pattern 
and  with  a  view  to  that  higher  knowledge;  their 
beauty  is  like  the  beauty  of  figures  or  pictures  excel¬ 
lently  wrought  by  the  hand  of  Daedalus,  or  some 
other  great  artist,  which  we  may  chance  to  behold; 
any  geometrician  who  saw  them  would  appreciate 
the  exquisiteness  of  their  workmanship,  but  he 
would  never  dream  of  thinking  that  in  them  he 
could  find  the  true  equal  or  the  true  double,  or  the 
truth  of  any  other  proportion.  .  .  .  And  will  not 
the  true  astronomer  have  the  same  feeling  when  he 
looks  at  the  movements  of  the  stars?  Will  he  not 
think  that  heaven  and  the  things  in  heaven  are 
framed  by  the  Creator  of  them  in  the  most  perfect 
manner?  But  he  will  never  imagine  that  the  pro¬ 
portions  of  night  and  day,  or  of  both  to  the  month, 
or  of  the  month  to  the  year,  or  of  the  stars  to 
these  and  to  one  another,  and  any  other  things  that 
are  material  and  visible  can  also  be  eternal  and 
subject  to  no  deviation — that  would  be  absurd.” 


Allegory 
of  the 
heavens — 
Republic, 
529 


372 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Duhem  on 
astronomy 
and  physics 


Valuation 
of  science 


Where  the  ancients  said  ‘‘astronomy’’  we  say 
“physics,”  remarks  a  savant  of  our  own  day;  and 
is  it  not  obvious  that  Plato’s  words  hold  with  per¬ 
fect  truth  of  our  own  science?  For  we,  like  Plato, 
do  not  look  to  the  visible  and  sensible  world  for 
our  realities,  but  to  an  ideal  world  which  is  only 
faintly  intimated  by  the  riddle  of  the  senses. 
Whether  it  be  as  in  our  mechanical  sciences  a  world 
of  atoms  and  molecules  or  of  ether  vortices  or  of 
electrons  and  ions,  or  as  in  our  biological  sciences 
a  world  of  genera  and  species,  in  every  case  we 
hypothecate  a  realm  of  forms,  of  ideas,  as  the  essen¬ 
tial  reality  of  all  natural  phenomena.  We  vary  no 
whit  from  Plato  in  all  this;  and  indeed,  little  as 
they  may  suspect  it,  all  our  scientists  are  good 
Platonians. 

But  where  we  do  vary  from  Plato  is  in  the  kind 
of  value  which  we  set  upon  our  ideas.  For  we 
regard  our  scientific  knowledge  as  ultimate  and  as 
a  kind  of  divine  possession  in  itself,  whereas  Plato 
held  it  to  be  only  a  means  whereby  men  can  dimly 
approach  the  being  of  divinity.  In  his  own  phrase 
we  are  “thrice  removed  from  the  king  and  the 
truth” :  behind  the  world  of  sense  is  the  world  of 
mathematical  forms  which  are  in  turn  but  the  reflec¬ 
tion  of  the  divine  intelligence.  Sense  is  the  allegory 
of  science,  but  science  itself  is  only  our  human 
parable  of  divinity — a  myth  whose  meaning  is  the 
mind  of  God.  Science  is  thus  a  purely  human  in¬ 
strument,  and  truth,  our  human,  intellectual  truth, 
is  but  the  device  whereby  we  adumbrate  the  nature 
of  being.  “The  Deity,”  says  Plutarch  in  one  of 
his  expositions  of  Plato,  “stands  in  no  need  of 
science,  as  an  instrument  to  withdraw  his  intellect 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS  373 

from  things  engendered  and  to  turn  it  to  the  reali¬ 
ties;  for  these  are  all  in  him,  and  with  him,  and 
about  him.”  It  is  only  the  weakness  of  human  in¬ 
sight  that  makes  the  world-myth  a  significant  myth. 

Ill 

Plato,  his  critics  are  accustomed  to  say,  resorts 
to  allegory,  to  what  he  himself  calls  myth,  when 
he  encounters  problems  with  which  rational  analysis 
alone  is  unable  to  cope.  The  lordly  tales  which 
adorn  his  dialogues  these  critics  view  as  imagina¬ 
tive  ornaments  which  Plato  himself  takes  only  half 
seriously.  This  I  believe  to  be  a  misunderstanding. 
It  is  characteristic  of  these  myths  that  they  are 
introduced  not  when  Plato  is  analyzing  the  nature 
of  being,  but  when  he  has  passed  to  a  discussion 
of  becoming,  that  is,  when  cosmic  history  rather 
than  metaphysical  organization  is  his  theme.  Now 
it  is  this  province  of  becoming,  which  we  should 
call  the  field  of  empirical  science,  which  is,  in  Plato’s 
view,  itself  an  allegorical  reality.  And  in  resorting 
to  allegory  for  its  description  he  is  but  emphasizing 
the  duplex  nature  of  the  fact.  There  is  no  field 
of  discourse  where  positive  statement  is  so  easy  and 
so  dangerous  as  in  the  field  of  science  (in  our  modern 
sense),  and  in  discussing  the  problems  of  change 
Plato  employs  myths  primarily  in  order  that  he 
may  avoid  dogmatism.  Empirical  science  is  for 
him  a  work  of  human  art,  just  as  the  empirical  uni¬ 
verse  is  God’s  work  of  art;  and  he  would  not  have 
us  forget,  what  we  are  so  prone  to  forget,  that  our 
constructions  of  cosmic  realities  give  us  at  best  but 
a  verisimilitude,  or  as  he  would  say,  an  “imitation” 
of  the  truth.  In  speaking  of  the  empiric  world,  he 


Plato’s 

myths 


God’s  art 


25 


374 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Language 
of  prob¬ 
ability 


Truth’s 

appraisal 


repeats  again  and  again,  we  can  use  but  the  “lan¬ 
guage  of  probability,”  and  the  language  of  prob¬ 
ability  is  myth. 

When  therefore  Plato,  in  the  language  of  prob¬ 
ability  or  of  myth,  sketches  for  us  the  cosmic  drama 
which  is  the  history  of  the  world,  it  is  with  no 
Laplacean  confidence  in  the  invulnerability  of  his 
representation.  Rather  he  is  aware  that  at  the  core 
it  cannot  be  the  essential  truth  of  the  cosmos :  science 
is  given  us  in  order  that  we  may  “imitate,”  as  he 
says,  “the  absolutely  unerring  courses  of  God  and 
regulate  our  own  vagaries”  :  it  is  not  and  it  cannot 
give  dogmatic  knowledge.  “Law  and  order,”  to 
quote  once  more,  “deliver  the  soul”;  and  there  is  a 
trenchant  difference  between  this  and  our  modern 
conception  that  the  soul  is  but  an  automatic  reflec¬ 
tion  of  external  laws  and  orders. 

The  motive  which  animates  Plato’s  cosmological 
speculations  is  thus  clearly  a  humanistic  motive.  He 
is  concerned  for  truth,  but  only  for  such  truth  as 
bears  directly  upon  men’s  conduct,  and  this  he  does 
not  expect  to  find  in  the  sensible  world.  For  him, 
as  for  Dante,  the  world  in  time  and  space  is  but 
the  vesture  of  man’s  life,  whose  essence  and  reality 
is  to  be  sought  in  that  divine  nature  of  which 
apparent  nature  is  the  image.  Truth,  then,  must 
be  appraised,  and  the  appraiser  is  the  Good  and  the 
Perfect, — for  “nothing  imperfect  is  the  measure 
of  anything.” 

The  conception  of  a  cosmic  drama — a  world-play 
having,  as  Aristotle  would  say,  a  beginning,  a  middle 
and  an  end,  a  complication  and  a  solution, — is  not 
new  with  Plato.  It  appears  in  the  theogonic  epics 
and  in  the  notions  of  the  physical  philosophers  of 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


375 


the  earlier  period.  But  it  is  with  Plato  that  the 
proper  motive  of  the  plot  appears;  and  this  is  the 
striving  for  the  good.  With  Plato’s  predecessors 
the  moral  problem  had  been  (as  it  is  to  our  scien¬ 
tists)  adventitious;  with  Plato  it  is  central,  and  we 
can  understand  his  science  of  first  and  last  things 
only  when  we  see  in  it,  as  he  saw  in  nature,  a 
cosmic  staging  of  the  search  for  salvation. 

Genesis  and  eschatology  represent  respectively 
the  complication  and  solution  of  the  plot.  Genesis, 
the  tale  of  origins,  is  treated  most  completely  in  the 
Timceus;  cosmic  justice  and  its  judgments  is  the 
theme  of  the  speculative  cosmology  of  Socrates  in 
the  Phcedo  and  of  the  vision  of  Er  in  the  Republic. 
In  these  and  in  allied  passages  Plato  draws  for  us 
his  world  emblem. 

Plato  begins  his  genesis,  in  the  Timceus,  with  an 
assertion  of  dualism.  “First,”  says  Timseus,  “we 
must  make  a  distinction  and  ask.  What  is  that 
which  always  is  and  has  no  becoming;  and  what 
is  that  which  is  always  becoming  and  never  is? 
That  which  is  apprehended  by  intelligence  and  rea¬ 
son  is  always  in  the  same  state;  but  that  which  is 
conceived  by  opinion  with  the  help  of  sensation 
and  without  reason,  is  always  in  a  process  of  becom¬ 
ing  and  perishing  and  never  really  is.”  In  its  in¬ 
ception  this  dualism  is  a  logical  one,  hypostatized 
into  the  familiar  Platonic  antithesis  of  the  World 
of  Sense  and  the  World  of  Ideas.  But  very  speedily 
we  perceive  that  the  moral  antithesis  of  good  and 
evil  is  in  it  also.  The  kernel  of  Plato’s  thought  is 
the  old  philosophical  dualism  of  Nous  and  Chaos, 
and  even  the  older  mythic  dualism  of  Heaven  and 
Earth;  and,  as  does  the  earlier  thought,  he  identifies 


Cosmic 

drama 


Logical 
dualism 
also  moral 


376 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Motive  of 
creation — 
Timceus,  30 


Anima 

mundi 


Mind  and  Light  with  Goodness,  and  Disorder  and 
Darkness  with  Evil. 

^'God  desired  that  all  things  should  be  good  and 
nothing  bad,  so  far  as  this  was  attainable.  Where¬ 
fore  also  finding  the  whole  visible  sphere  not  at  rest, 
but  moving  in  an  irregular  and  disorderly  fashion, 
out  of  disorder  he  brought  order,  considering  that 
this  was  in  every  way  better  than  the  other.  Now 
the  deeds  of  the  best  could  never  be  or  have  been 
other  than  the  fairest;  and  the  creator,  reflecting  on 
the  things  which  are  by  nature  visible,  found  that 
no  unintelligent  creature  taken  as  a  whole  was 
fairer  than  the  intelligent  taken  as  a  whole;  and 
that  intelligence  could  not  be  present  in  anything 
which  was  devoid  of  soul.  For  which  reason,  when 
he  was  framing  the  universe,  he  put  intelligence  in 
soul,  and  soul  in  body,  that  he  might  be  the  creator 
of  a  work  which  was  by  nature  fairest  and  best. 
Wherefore,  using  the  language  of  probability,  we 
may  say  that  the  world  became  a  living  creature 
truly  endowed  with  soul  and  intelligence  by  the  prov¬ 
idence  of  God.” 

In  these  words  of  Timaeus,  Plato  outlines  his  con¬ 
ception  of  creation.  God,  perceiving  the  disorder 
of  Chaos,  designs  to  redeem  it  by  imparting  to  it 
the  image  of  mind,  of  Cosmos,  order.  He  creates 
it,  therefore,  in  the  likeness  of  a  perfect  animal 
(TravTcXh  “the  very  image  of  that  whole  of 

which  all  other  animals  both  individually  and  in 
their  tribes  are  portions.”  First  he  created  its  soul, 
the  anima  mundi,  “to  be  the  ruler  and  mistress,  of 
whom  the  body  was  to  be  the  subject,”  organized 
from  the  categories  of  thought,  from  identity  and 
difference  and  essence,  in  harmony  of  number. 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS  377 

Afterwards  he  gave  it  body,  interfusing  with  the 
visible  body  the  rational  soul,  so  that  the  whole 
universe  of  being  became  one  animal  endowed  with 
soul  (^wov  eixij/vxov). 

“And  he  gave  to  the  world  the  figure  which  was 
suitable  and  also  natural.  Now  to  the  animal  which 
was  to  comprehend  all  animals,  that  figure  was 
suitable  which  comprehends  within  itself  all  other 
figures.  Wherefore  he  made  the  world  in  the  form 
of  a  globe,  round  as  from  a  lathe,  having  its  ex¬ 
tremes  in  every  direction  equidistant  from  the  cen¬ 
ter,  the  most  perfect  and  the  most  like  itself  of 
all  figures;  for  he  considered  that  the  like  is  in¬ 
finitely  fairer  than  the  unlike.  This  he  finished  off, 
making  the  surface  smooth  all  round  for  many  rea¬ 
sons  ;  in  the  first  place  because  the  living  being  had 
no  need  of  eyes  when  there  was  nothing  remaining 
outside  of  him  to  be  seen;  nor  of  ears  when  there 
was  nothing  to  be  heard ;  and  there  was  no  surround¬ 
ing  atmosphere  to  be  breathed;  nor  would  there 
have  been  any  use  of  organs  by  the  help  of  which 
he  might  receive  his  food  or  get  rid  of  what  he 
had  already  digested,  since  there  was  nothing  that 
went  from  him  or  came  into  him:  for  there  was 
nothing  beside  him.  .  .  .  And,  as  he  had  no  need 
to  take  anything  or  defend  himself  against  any  one, 
the  Creator  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  bestow 
upon  him  hands :  nor  had  he  any  need  of  feet  nor 
of  the  whole  apparatus  of  walking;  but  the  move¬ 
ment  suited  to  his  spherical  form  was  assigned  to 
him,  ....  and  he  made  the  universe  a  circle  mov¬ 
ing  within  a  circle,  one  and  solitary,  yet  by  reason 
of  its  excellence  able  to  converse  with  itself,  and 
needing  no  other  friendship  or  acquaintance.  Hav- 


The  cosmic 
animal — 
Timceus,  33 


378 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Time  the 
image  of 
eternity — 
Timcous,  37 


Space  and 
necessity — 
TimcBUs,  50 


ing  these  purposes  in  view  he  created  the  world  a 
blessed  god.” 

‘‘When  the  father  and  creator  saw  the  creature 
which  he  had  made  moving  and  living,  the  created 
image  of  the  eternal  gods,  he  rejoiced,  and  in  his 
joy  determined  to  make  the  copy  still  more  like  the 
original ;  and  as  this  was  eternal,  he  sought  to  make 
the  universe  eternal,  so  far  as  might  be.  Now  the 
nature  of  the  ideal  being  was  everlasting,  but  to 
bestow  this  attribute  in  its  fullness  upon  a  creature 
was  impossible.  Wherefore  he  resolved  to  have  a 
moving  image  of  eternity,  and  when  he  set  in  order 
the  heaven,  he  made  this  image  eternal  but  moving 
according  to  number,  while  eternity  itself  rests  in 
unity;  and  this  image  we  call  time.”  Time  came 
into  being  with  the  heavens  which  measure  it,  and 
will  be  dissolved  with  them,  says  Plato;  but  space 
is  of  another  origin.  For  besides  the  reason  which 
gives  cosmic  form  there  is  another  cause  of  being, 
a  principle  of  limitation  which  Plato  calls  necessity. 
We  must  conceive,  he  says,  of  three  natures;  first, 
that  which  is  in  process  of  generation,  and  this 
would  be  the  world  of  nature  as  we  experience  it; 
second,  that  in  which  the  generation  takes  place, 
and  this  is  the  recipient  or  matrix  of  nature;  and 
third,  that  of  which  the  generated  world  is  an 
image,  and  this  is  the  cosmic  reason  or  form.  “We 
may  liken  the  receiving  principle  to  a  mother,  and 
the  source  or  spring  to  a  father,  and  the  intermediate 
nature  to  a  child,”  he  says,  and  we  think  immediately 
of  the  mythopoetic  union  of  Earth  and  Heaven  and 
of  the  Life  of  Nature  which  is  its  offspring.  But 
for  Plato  this  is  a  mere  trope ;  he  does  not  rest  with¬ 
out  being  scientifically  explicit.  There  are  three 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


379 


kinds  of  being:  that  which  is  uncreated  and  in¬ 
destructible,  changeless,  eternal,  imperceptible  to  Father, 
any  sense,  open  only  to  the  contemplation  of  the 
intelligence,  and  this  is  the  principle  of  the  Father, 
the  ideal  or  formal  essence  of  the  world;  again,  that 
which  is  sensible  and  created  and  always  in  motion, 
the  Child,  the  world  of  change  and  life;  and  finally, 
there  is  a  third  nature,  the  Mother,  which,  like  the 
Father,  is  eternal  and  admits  not  of  destruction, 
which  provides  a  home  for  all  created  things,  and 
is  apprehended  “without  the  help  of  sense,  by  a 
kind  of  spurious  reason,  and  is  indeed  hardly  real.’’ 

This  nature  is  space,  and  we  “beholding  as  in  a 
dream,  say  of  all  existence  that  it  must  of  necessity 
be  in  some  place  and  occupy  a  space,  but  that  what 
is  neither  in  heaven  nor  in  earth  has  no  existence.” 

This  mothering  space  which  is  hardly  real,  yet  is 
the  cause  of  the  determinism  of  nature,  Plato  iden-  Matter 
tifies  as  the  material  element  of  being.  As  pure 
matter  it  is  purely  indeterminate,  but  it  is  receptive 
of  all  determinations.  The  four  elements,  earth,  air, 
fire  and  water,  are  formed  from  it,  for  “the  mother 
substance  becomes  earth  and  air,  in  so  far  as  she 
receives  the  impressions  of  them.”  Plato’s  concep¬ 
tion  of  the  formation  of  these  elements  from  the 
original  substance  was  as  purely  mathematical  as 
are  our  modern  physical  notions.  “God  fashioned 
them  by  form  and  number,”  he  says ;  and  the  forms 
which  he  assigned  were  the  forms  of  the  regular 
solids.  Thus  the  form  of  the  fiery  element  is  the  Elements 
pyramid,  of  air  the  octahedron,  of  water  the  icosahe¬ 
dron,  of  earth  the  cube.  The  fifth  solid,  the  dodeca¬ 
hedron,  is  the  form  of  the  universe  as  a  whole,  or 
perhaps  one  might  say  the  scaffold  upon  which  the 


380 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


God  the 
Geometer — 
Plutarch, 
Synposiacs, 
VlII.  ii. 


Evil  and 
death 


Spherical  universe  is  constructed.  Further,  these 
elements  are  themselves  compounded  of  simpler 
mathematical  forms,  the  pyramid,  octahedron  and 
icosahedron  of  equilateral,  the  cube  of  isosceles 
triangles;  so  that  if  we  regard  the  elements  as 
molecules,  we  may  view  the  triangles  as  atoms  of 
the  material  substrate. 

Doubtless  it  was  this  geometrical  account  of  mat¬ 
ter  which  gave  rise  to  the  saying  ascribed  to  Plato 
that  “God  always  geometrizes,’' — for  God,  says 
Plutarch  in  his  commentary  on  the  saying,  made  the 
world  in  no  other  way  than  by  setting  terms  to 
infinite  and  chaotic  matter.  But  it  is  not  with  the 
mathematical  aspect  of  Plato’s  theory  that  we  are 
here  most  concerned,  but  with  its  moral  bearings. 
For  it  is  in  matter  that  Plato  finds  the  root  of  evil, 
and,  if  we  may  so  put  it,  the  villainy  of  the  world. 
In  framing  the  inhabitants  of  the  world,  according 
to  the  account  of  Timseus,  the  Creator  made  first 
the  race  of  gods,  perfect  and  immortal;  but  of  the 
race  of  men  he  made  only  the  souls,  their  bodies 
were  handed  over  to  the  created  gods  to  be  com¬ 
posed  of  perishable  matter.  “The  part  of  them 
worthy  of  the  name  immortal,  which  is  called  divine 
and  is  the  guiding  principle  of  those  who  are  will¬ 
ing  to  follow  justice  and  you  (the  gods) — of  that 
divine  part  I  will  myself,”  saith  the  Creator,  “sow 
the  seed,  and  having  made  a  beginning,  I  will 
hand  the  work  over  to  you.  And  do  ye  then  inter¬ 
weave  the  mortal  with  the  immortal,  and  make  and 
beget  living  creatures,  and  give  them  food,  and 
make  them  to  grow,  and  receive  them  again  in 
death.” 

And  having  made  souls  equal  in  number  to  the 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


381 


stars,  and  having  assigned  each  soul  to  a  star,  and 
there  placed  them  as  in  a  chariot,  God  “showed 
them  the  nature  of  the  universe,  and  declared  to 
them  the  laws  of  destiny,  according  to  which  their 
first  birth  would  be  one  and  the  same  for  all, — no 
one  should  suffer  a  disadvantage  at  his  hands,”— 
and  he  showed  them  how  “he  who  lived  well  during 
his  appointed  time  was  to  return  and  dwell  in  his 
native  star,  and  there  would  have  a  blessed  and 
congenial  existence;  but  if  he  failed  in  attaining 
this,”  he  would  be  reborn  into  some  brute  who  re¬ 
sembled  him  in  evil  nature,  nor  would  his  toils  and 
transformations  cease  until  the  principle  of  reason 
had  enabled  him  to  overcome  “the  turbulent  and 
irrational  mob  of  later  accretions,  made  up  of  fire 
and  air  and  water  and  earth”  and  return  to  his 
first  and  purer  state.  And  “having  given  all  these 
laws  to  his  creatures,  that  he  might  be  guiltless  of 
future  evil  in  any  of  them,  the  Creator  sowed  some 
of  them  in  the  earth,  and  some  in  the  moon,  and 
some  in  the  other  instruments  of  time;  and  when 
he  had  sown  them  he  committed  to  the  younger 
gods  the  fashioning  of  their  mortal  bodies,  and 
desired  them  to  furnish  what  was  still  lacking  to 
the  human  soul,  and  to  rule  over  them,  and  to 
pilot  the  mortal  animal  in  the  best  and  wisest  man¬ 
ner  which  they  could,  and  avert  from  him  all  but 
self-inflicted  evils.” 

In  these  passages  we  see  the  rationale  of  the 
Platonic  doctrines  of  anamnesis  and  metempsy¬ 
chosis,  or  recollection  and  transmigration.  The 
great  image  in  the  Phcedrus  of  the  soul  in  its  chariot 
driving  the  unruly  and  the  ruly  steed,  and  the  de¬ 
scriptions  of  a  future-world  judgment  in  the  Phcedo 


To  each 
soul  a  star 


Anamnesis 
and  metem¬ 
psychosis 


382 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Dualistic 

strife 


Laws,  906 


Evil 

eternal 


and  Republic,  in  which  these  doctrines  are  presented, 
appear  as  necessary  scenes  in  the  cosmic  drama. 
The  motive  of  that  drama  is  the  conflict  of  form 
and  matter,  Nous  and  Chaos,  which  on  its  theo¬ 
logical  side  is  the  conflict  of  God  and  Necessity  as 
the  two  principles  of  being,  and  in  its  moral  aspect 
is  the  strife  of  Good  and  Evil.  In  each  of  these 
senses  Plato  is  a  dualist;  and  if  he  describes  chaos 
and  matter  and  evil  in  negative  terms,  this  is  not 
because  he  views  them  as  non-existent  (as  our 
modern  idealists  seem  to  do),  but  because  he  re¬ 
gards  them  as  impermanent,  and  hence  as  unreal; 
for  Plato  defines  the  real  as  the  permanent,  never, 
however,  meaning  thereby  to  deny  genuineness  of 
our  experience  of  change  and  hence  of  imperfec¬ 
tion  and  evil. 

Nevertheless,  Good  and  Evil,  God  and  the  Devil, 
are  not  in  Plato’s  conception  co-ordinate  powers. 
Their  difference  is  a  difference  of  dramatic  posi¬ 
tion.  In  the  world-conflict  we,  as  human  beings, 
are  all  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  good,  and  if  we 
are  traitorous  to  it  this  is  because  of  the  deceit  of 
the  enemy.  ‘‘For  as  we  acknowledge  the  world  to 
be  full  of  many  goods  and  also  of  evils,  and  of  more 
evils  than  goods,  there  is,  as  we  affirm,  an  immortal 
conflict  going  on  among  us,  which  requires  mar¬ 
velous  watchfulness,  and  in  that  conflict  the  gods 
and  demigods  are  our  allies  and  we  are  their  prop¬ 
erty.”  No  Persian  has  ever  stated  this  fundamental 
dualism  more  emphatically  nor  adhered  to  it  more 
uncompromisingly.  From  it  Plato  deduces  the 
ascetic  rule  of  life  which  recurs  in  his  writings  so 
repeatedly.  “Evils,”  says  Socrates  in  the  Thecetetiis, 
“can  never  pass  away;  for  there  must  always  re- 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS  383 

main  something  which  is  antagonistic  to  good.  Hav¬ 
ing  no  place  among  the  gods  in  heaven,  of  necessity 
they  hover  around  the  mortal  nature  and  this  earthly 
sphere.  Wherefore  we  ought  to  fly  away  from 
earth  to  heaven  as  quickly  as  we  can.”  And  from 
it,  too,  comes  Plato’s  clear-eyed  perception  that  the 
idea  of  good  holds  the  hegemony  over  all  our  in¬ 
terests,  scientific  and  aesthetic  as  well  as  moral.  It 
is  the  good — as  our  pragmatists  say — which  makes 
truth  true  and  is  indeed  the  measure  of  reality. 
For  ^‘that  which  imparts  truth  to  the  known  and 
the  power  of  knowing  to  the  knower  is  what  I 
would  have  you  term  the  idea  of  good,  and  this 
you  will  deem  to  be  the  cause  of  science,  and  of 
truth  in  so  far  as  the  latter  becomes  the  subject  of 
knowledge;  beautiful,  too,  as  are  both  truth  and 
knowledge,  you  will  be  right  in  esteeming  this  other 
nature  as  more  beautiful  than  either;  and  as  light 
and  sight  may  be  truly  said  to  be  like  the  sun  and 
yet  not  to  be  the  sun,  so  in  this  other  sphere,  science 
and  truth  may  be  deemed  to  be  like  the  good,  but 
not  the  good;  the  good  has  a  place  of  honor  yet 
higher.” 

IV 

Let  me  briefly  recapitulate  Plato’s  view.  In  the 
beginning  were  God  and  Chaos.  And  God  strove 
to  impress  the  spirit  of  order,  which  is  his  own 
divine  spirit,  upon  the  face  of  the  Void.  And  in 
his  own  image  he  created  a  soul  of  the  World,  and 
the  name  of  this  soul  is  Cosmos,  Order.  And  to 
this  divine  soul  he  united  a  body,  hewn  from 
Chaos,  and  this  soul  in  this  body  forms  the  visible 
Heaven  and  all  that  is  therein.  And  he  created 


Hegemony 
of  the 
Good 


The 

Platonic 

Genesis 


384 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Strife  the 
Father 
of  All 


Vitality  of 
Platonism 


Socrates 


inhabitants  for  the  world  which  he  had  made,  the 
race  of  gods  and  of  demigods  and  the  race  of  mortal 
men;  and  these  were  to  be  his  allies  and  his  help¬ 
mates  in  the  redemption  of  Chaos.  For  Chaos  is 
ruled  by  blind  Necessity,  and  the  horror  of  its  blind¬ 
ness  enters  into  all  being  in  which  it  has  a  share; 
so  that  not  men  nor  demigods  nor  gods  are  free 
from  the  peril  of  Darkness,  which  is  the  peril  of 
their  material  and  temporal  being.  Wherefore  it 
behooves  them,  men  and  gods,  to  strive  nobly  after 
the  Good,  holding  fast  to  the  image  of  divinity 
which  is  in  them.  And  to  this  strife  there  is  and 
there  can  be  no  end.  For  Chaos  is  co-equal  with 
God,  infinite  in  change  as  God  is  infinite  in  might; 
and  the  conflict  of  the  two  is  the  eternal  struggle 
for  the  world’s  salvation  which  is  the  world’s  life. 

In  conclusion,  I  would  say  a  word  in  regard  to 
the  wonderful  vitality  of  Plato’s  thought;  for  to  no 
other  philosopher  has  it  been  given  to  lay  such  last¬ 
ing  hold  at  once  upon  men’s  reason  and  upon  their 
affectionate  imagination.  I  think  the  clue  to  this 
will  appear  if  we  compare  his  attitude  with  that  of 
his  great  pupil  and  competitor  toward  the  man  from 
whom  both  derive  their  inspiration.  For  Aristotle, 
the  arch-intellectualist,  saw  in  Socrates  but  the  in¬ 
ventor  of  definition — “two  things  may  be  fairly 
ascribed  to  Socrates,  inductive  arguments  and  uni¬ 
versal  definition” — and  he  made  definition  the  very 
core  of  his  own  metaphysics.  But  for  Plato  Socrates 
is  first  and  last  that  “mid-wife  of  souls”  which  he 
would  have  himself  to  be.  Plato,  in  other  words, 
had  caught  what  Aristotle  missed,  the  central  spiri¬ 
tuality  of  Socrates’  teaching. 

Plato  is  a  great  dialectician  and  a  master  of  the 


PLATO’S  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  COSMOS 


385 


things  of  the  intellect,  but  he  knew  as  Socrates  had 
taught,  that  reason  alone  cannot  bring  us  to  the 
truth,  and  that  science  is  no  capable  vessel  of  reality. 
When  “all  philosophers  proclaim,  as  with  one  voice, 
that  mind  is  the  king  of  heaven  and  earth — in  reality 
they  are  but  magnifying  themselves,”  he  says;  for 
he  knows  well  that  beyond  the  symbols  of  sense, 
which  are  the  symbols  of  our  reason,  there  is  a  more 
splendid  reality.  We  can  see  this  other-world  truth 
but  as  in  a  glass  darkly;  we  can  speak  of  it  only  in 
myth  and  allegory;  we  can  hope  for  its  realization 
never  save  in  those  aeon-parted  moments  of  the 
cosmic  cycles  when  the  soul,  after  its  hour  of  agony, 
has  brought  its  steeds  to  that  outer  revolving  heaven 
whence  the  things  that  are  beyond  stand  revealed. 
And  “of  that  heaven  which  is  above  the  heavens, 
what  earthly  poet  ever  did  or  ever  will  sing 
worthily?  ....  There  abides  the  very  being  with 
which  true  knowledge  is  concerned;  the  colorless, 
formless,  intangible  essence,  visible  only  to  mind, 
who  is  the  pilot  of  the  soul.  The  divine  intelli¬ 
gence,  being  nurtured  upon  mind  and  pure  knowl¬ 
edge,  and  the  intelligence  of  every  soul  which  is 
capable  of  receiving  the  food  proper  to  it,  rejoices 
at  beholding  reality,  and  once  more  gazing  upon 
truth,  is  replenished  and  made  glad,  until  the  revolu¬ 
tion  of  the  worlds  brings  her  round  again  to  the 
same  place.” 

Such  is  the  beatific  vision,  and  “how  can  he  who 
has  magnificence  of  mind  and  is  the  spectator  of  all 
time  and  all  existence  think  much  of  human  life?” 
Surely  he  will  value  it  only  for  this  spiritual  prospect 
which  it  promises;  “he  will  look  at  the  city  which  is 
within  him”  whereof  the  pattern  is  the  heavenly 


Mind^ 
the  king 


Phcedrus, 

247 


Beatific 

vision 


386 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Spiritual 

realities 


city;  and  ‘‘he  will  live  after  the  manner  of  that  city, 
having  nothing  to  do  with  any  other.” 

Is  it  not  because  of  this  faith  in  the  spiritual 
reality  of  the  world-life,  which  is  a  faith  in  the 
spiritual  power  of  mankind,  that  Plato  has  brought 
conviction  to  the  minds  of  his  fellows,  generation 
after  generation,  the  edifice  of  his  thought  standing 
secure  amid  the  rise  and  decay  of  competing  sys¬ 
tems?  And  is  there  other  measure  of  truth  than 
this? 


XL  MUSIC  AND  POETRY 

I 


The  art  of  music,  while  doubtless  the  most 
ancient  of  all  the  arts,  has,  of  them  all,  the 
briefest  historic  span.  The  architecture,  sculpture.  The  art 
and  painting,  of  the  remotest  Egyptian  antiquity  are  i^usic 
continuous  with  the  architecture,  sculpture,  and 
painting  of  today:  amid  all  the  diversities  of  schools 
and  styles,  there  is  a  central  unity  of  development. 

The  literatures  of  the  Hebrews,  Greeks,  and  Latins 
are  in  an  even  more  intimate  sense  but  the  earlier 
chapters  in  the  history  of  Western  Letters,  as  a 
whole.  But  music  is  connected  with  antiquity  by 
the  most  tenuous  threads.  We  know  something  of 
the  externals  of  ancient  music,  the  use  of  sistrum 
and  trumpet  and  sounding  strings  by  the  men  of 
Egypt, — that  the  Jews  lamented  with  harps  beside 
the  waters  of  Babylon, — that  the  Greeks  created  a 
science  from  their  music  of  lyre  and  flute  and  voice, 
and  no  doubt  possessed  an  art  worthy  of  that  science. 

But  of  ancient  music  itself  our  knowledge  is  little 
more  than  guesswork.  Certainly,  we  can  point  to 
no  such  continuity  in  the  history  of  our  music  and 
ancient  music  as  is  patent  even  to  the  casual  student 
of  literature  or  the  fine  arts. 

The  continuous  history  of  the  art  of  music  dates  Its  history 
from  the  Middle  Ages.  The  tenth,  eleventh,  twelfth, 
and  thirteenth  centuries  were  the  centuries  which 
saw  the  transformation  of  the  old  inflectional 
tongues  into  the  analytic  languages  of  modern 

387 


388 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Song  and 
ballad 


Church 

music 


Europe,  which  saw  the  beginnings  of  modern  litera¬ 
tures,  and  which  witnessed  the  perfection  of  the 
great  and  new  art  of  Gothic  architecture.  These 
were  centuries — culminating  in  the  thirteenth,  one 
of  the  supreme  periods  of  human  genius — during 
which  the  life  of  the  spirit,  awakening  from  the 
long  torpor  of  the  ages  we  call  “the  Dark,’’  was 
finding  its  own  in  new  crafts  and  new  sciences,  in 
a  new  poetry,  and  a  new  painting,  and  a  new  sculp¬ 
ture;  and  it  was  these  fecund  centuries  which  beheld 
the  birth  of  our  modern  art  of  music. 

I  am  not  now  speaking  of  the  elemental  forms  of 
music.  The  song  that  is  in  all  men’s  hearts  when 

“Lenten  is  come  with  love,” 

and  birds  and  blossoms  are  awake  after  winter 
snows, — the  ballad  that  celebrates  the  deeds  of  stout 
Robin  Hood, — these  are  a  part  of  the  ageless  heri¬ 
tage  of  the  human  soul.  And  if  they  inspired  a 
wonderful  freshness  of  minstrelsy  in  the  chansons 
of  the  troubadours  of  Provence  and  Italy,  in  the 
contes  and  romaunts  of  the  jongleurs  of  Norman 
France  and  Plantagenet  England,  in  the  love-songs 
of  the  German  minnesingers, — all  this  was  but  a 
part  and  portion  of  the  splendid  vitality  of  a  great 
age. 

But  the  art  of  music  of  which  I  do  speak  is  that 
which  arose  in  the  great  cathedral  centers — the 
music  of  the  church  choir,  which  was  to  pass  from 
the  strong  and  simple  canto  fermo  of  the  Gregorian 
chant  to  the  marvelous  polyphony  of  Palsestrina  and 
Bach.  Probably  the  rudiments  of  this  music  were 
all  that  the  Middle  Ages  retained  from  the  musical 
art  of  classical  times, — the  notes  of  the  Greek 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


389 


modes,  inverted  and  ascending,  the  wholly  vocal 
melody,  from  which,  long  since,  the  rhythmic  remi¬ 
niscence  of  the  dance  had  been  purified  away,  so 
that  the  music  was  as  free  from  fleshly  feeling  as 
Botticelli’s  bodiless  cherubs.  And  it  was  just  this 
abstractness  of  the  discarnate  voice — issuing  from 
the  choir-loft  not  as  the  breath  of  pulsating  human 
bodies,  but  like  the  song  of  invisible  angels — that 
made  of  this  music  of  the  Church  so  spiritual  a 
music,  and  at  the  same  time  made  pure  music  pos¬ 
sible  as  an  architectonic  art. 

You  have  heard,  often  enough,  that  music  is 
subjective,  ideal,  a  language  of  the  emotions  and  of 
the  spirit.  Have  you  ever  asked  why  it  is  so  ?  And 
is  not  the  answer,  in  part  at  least,  just  here:  that 
music,  like  all  sound,  seems  to  be  independent  of — a 
spirit  freed  from — the  body  or  instrument  whence 
it  issues?  It  is  its  incorporeality,  its  freedom  from 
material  embodiments  that  makes  music  ideal  and 
spiritual;  and  the  polyphonic  music  of  the  Church, 
which  of  all  music  most  perfectly  attains  this  incor¬ 
poreal  character,  is  of  all  music  the  most  purely  and 
wonderfully  a  speech  of  angels. 

“I  heard  Hosannah!  sung  from  choir  to  choir, 

To  that  fixed  Point  which  holds  them,  to  that  Height 
They  have  known  always  and  will  always  know  .  .  . 

Unceasingly  Hosannah!  is  their  song, 

Which  in  three  melodies  in  orders  three 
Reflects  the  spirit  of  their  joy  triune.” 

Such  is  Dante’s  description  of  the  polyphony  of 
Paradise — and  surely  none  has  ever  given  a  more 
beautiful  image  of  the  spiritual  choirs  than  his,  in 
which  he  likens  them  to  singing  stars  circling  forever 
above  the  Celestial  Rose. 


Music 

discarnate 


Paradiso, 

XXVIII 


26 


390 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Effect  of 
Latin 


Most 
Christian 
of  hymns 


May  it  not  be  that  this  music  of  the  Church  gained 
something  of  its  power,  too,  from  the  fact  that  it 
was  wedded  to  a  language  which  had  become  remote 
from  the  modes  of  speech  in  which  men  expressed 
their  bodily  needs  and  mundane  desires  ?  Mediaeval 
Latin  was  the  language  of  learned  and  serious 
thought,  above  all  of  religious  thought.  Its  greatest 
literary  productions  were  the  noble  hymns — the 
noblest,  I  can  but  think,  of  all  Christian  hymns — 
which  were  sung  by  the  cathedral  choirs.  The 
^^Sequences’^  of  Abelard  and  of  Adam  of  St.  Victor 
in  their  changing  metres  and  constant  variety  of 
stanza  reflect  the  intricacy  of  the  polyphonic  music 
or  of  the  interwoven  architectural  traceries  of  the 
cathedrals  in  which  they  were  sung.  I  cannot  here 
enter  into  this  subject,  yet  neither  can  I,  before  leav¬ 
ing  it,  forbear  quoting  a  few  verses  from  that 
grandest  and  most  Christian  hymn  of  them  all,  the 
Dies  Irce  of  Thomas  of  Celano : 


“Dies  irae,  dies  ilia 
Sblvet  saeclum  in  favilla, 

Teste  David  cum  Sybilla  .  . 

“Day  of  Wrath,  oh,  dread  day  coming. 

When  the  years  shall  fall  in  ashes, 

As  saith  David  and  the  Sibyl  .  . 

And  then  the  wonderful  organ- tones  of  that  stanza : 

“Tuba  mirum  spargens  sonum 
Per  sepulchra  regionum, 

Coget  omnes  ante  thronum.” 

“Trump  of  doom  its  thunder  rolling 
Mid  the  tombs  of  every  region 
Summons  all  before  the  throne  .  .  .” 


While  the  passionate  yearning  that  seems  the  very 
essence  of  the  mystical  spirit  in  Mediaeval  Chris- 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


391 


tianity  surely  finds  its  supreme  eloquence  in  the  ten¬ 
der  harmonies  of  these  stanzas : 

“Recordare,  Jesu  pie, 

Quod  sum  causa  tuse  viae; 

Ne  me  perdas  ilia  diel 

“Quaerens  me  sedisti  lassus, 

Redemisti  crucem  passus : 

Tantus  labor  non  sit  casus  1” 

“O  remember,  Jesu,  pray  thee. 

That  for  me  thy  Toil  was  taken, — 

Lose  me  not  on  that  dread  Day! 

“Seeking  me  thou’dst  linger  weary, 

To  redeem,  the  Cross  didst  suffer: 

Ne’er  thine  anguish  shall  be  vain!” 

Can  we  find  any  broader  analogy  between 
Mediaeval  music  and  Mediaeval  poetry?  It  seems 
to  me  that  we  can,  and  without  undue  fancy. 

“Architecture  is  frozen  music,”  is  the  saying  of 
Friedrich  Schlegel.  And  if  this  saying  is  anywhere 
significant  surely  it  is  so  in  relation  to  polyphonic 
music  and  Gothic  architecture.  In  each  there  is  the 
progressive  playing  of  part  against  part,  the  build¬ 
ing  up  of  member  against  member,  each  structure 
completed  only  to  point  to  a  still  incomplete  super¬ 
structure,  joining  in  the  endless  aspirational  upward 
sweep  of  the  whole.  Arch  rests  upon  arch,  flying 
buttress  upon  buttress,  pinnacle  rises  above  pin¬ 
nacle, — everywhere  there  is  a  balance  not  quite 
attained,  a  symmetry  not  quite  perfected, — and  by 
and  by  we  realize  that  no  Gothic  church  can  ever 
be  completed:  its  beauty  is  its  eternal  promise,  its 
endless  upward  flight.  Is  not  this  the  very  image 
of  contrapuntal  music,  and  of  its  supreme  expres¬ 
sion  in  the  fugue? 

And  if  we  turn  to  Mediaeval  literature  the  thing 


Analogy 
of  archi¬ 
tecture 


392 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Tales  and 
fables 


Polyphonic 

literature 


The  Divine 
Comedy 


that  first  strikes  us  is  the  prevalence  of  double 
meanings.  The  moral  tales,  the  fables  of  talking 
beasts,  the  mystic  quests  of  the  Holy  Grail,  the 
dramatized  Trinities  and  Passions  and  Redemptions, 
everywhere  we  find  allegory ,  the  play  of  idea  against 
idea,  of  meaning  within  meaning,  intricacy  patterned 
within  intricacy. 

Is  not  this  literature,  too.  Gothic  and  poly¬ 
phonic  ?  And  need  I  do  more,  to  accent  the  analogy, 
than  recall  to  your  minds  the  greatest  of  all  Mediaeval 
poems?  For  you  will  remember  Dante’s  letter  to 
Can  Grande  in  which  he  tells  of  the  four-fold  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  passage  of  Israel  out  of  Egypt :  its  literal 
meaning,  the  exodus  of  the  Children  of  Israel  in  the 
time  of  Moses;  its  allegorical  meaning,  our  redemp¬ 
tion  through  Christ;  its  moral  meaning,  the  con¬ 
version  of  the  soul  from  the  wretchedness  of  sin  to 
the  state  of  grace;  and  its  anagogical  meaning,  typi¬ 
fying  the  passage  of  the  soul  from  its  servitude  to 
fleshly  corruption  into  the  freedom  of  eternal 
glory, — and  you  will  remember,  too,  that  he  builds 
his  own  stupendous  Divine  Comedy  upon  a  similar 
interplay  of  meanings: 


Literally,’'  he  says,  “the  subject  of  this  whole  work  is  the 
state  of  the  soul  after  death,  taken  simply;  for  from  this  and 
about  this  the  whole  theme  turns.  But  allegorically  the  subject 
is  Man,  through  freedom  of  choice,  by  merit  or  demerit  made 
subject  to  the  rewards  or  punishments  of  Divine  Justice.” 

In  the  days  of  its  senescence  polyphonic  music 
resolved  into  a  mere  monkish  puzzle,  as  many  as 
twenty  or  thirty  themes  being  wrought  into  unper- 
formable  manuscript  fugues.  But  even  this  decay 
is  not  without  its  literary  parallels.  At  least,  the 
dry  schematisms  of  scholastic  reasoners  suggest  the 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


393 


analogy.  I  will  only  cite  for  you  the  erudite  Bur¬ 
ton’s  characterization  of  that  .  .  . 

.  .  most  copious  confuter  of  atheists  ....  Marinus 
Mersennus  in  his  Commentaries  on  Genesis.  .  .  .  He  sets 
down  at  large  the  causes  of  this  brutish  passion  (seventeen  in 
number,  I  take  it),  answers  all  their  arguments  and  sophisms, 
which  he  reduceth  to  twenty-six  heads,  proving  withal  his  own 
assertion :  ‘There  is  a  God,  such  a  God,  the  true  and  sole 
God,’  by  thirty-five  reasons.  His  Colophon  is  how  to  resist 
and  suppress  atheism  and  to  that  purpose  he  adds  four  especial 
means  or  ways,  which  whoso  will  may  profitably  peruse.” 

II 

The  Renaissance  is  the  period  of  revived  human¬ 
ism.  Men  turned  from  the  ascetic  denial  of  the 
monastery  or  the  lonely  and  passionate  longing  of 
the  anchorite’s  cell  to  view  with  freshened  and 
curious  eyes  the  changing  light  and  color  and  move¬ 
ment  and  sound  of  the  Pageant  of  Life.  Palace 
and  Court  replace  Cathedral  and  Cloister  as  the 
center  of  intellectual  action.  We  think  no  longer  of 
grey-stoled  monks,  thin-visaged  and  sedentary,  but 
of  swashbucklers  and  tramp  scholars  and  hard  sol¬ 
diers  of  fortune,  of  devil-may-care  Cellinis,  roister¬ 
ing  Marlowes,  chivalrous  Sidneys,  damsels  gay  with 
bright  brocades,  and  young  gallants  with  a  lady’s 
favor  at  the  cap,  a  lute  swung  from  the  shoulder, 
and  a  sharp  blade  lithe  in  its  sheath.  These  were 
the  singing  years,  when  life  was  as  full  and  exu¬ 
berant  as  a  song  of  passion,  and  as  brief  .  .  .  . 
when  men  sought  eagerly  quick  loves  and  quick 
deaths. 

We  know  what  the  Renaissance  meant  in  litera¬ 
ture:  such  a  burst  of  bloom  that  its  fragrance  is 
still,  like  a  wine  in  the  blood,  intoxicating  the  imag- 


Anatomy  of 
Melancholy 

III.  iv.  ii.  i 


The 

Renaissance 


Renaissance 

literature 


394 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Fine  Arts 


Music 


ination.  The  sonnets  of  laureled  Petrarch,  the  mad 
tales  of  Boccaccio,  the  jests  and  grandiosities  of 
Ronsard,  the  rogueries  and  sweetnesses  of  Villon, 
and  in  our  own  literature  all  that  is  represented  by 
the  names  of  Sidney  and  Spenser  and  Marlowe  and 
Webster  and  Jonson  and  Shakespeare  and  lonely 
Milton, — these  are  the  gift  and  the  life  of  the 
Renaissance  in  letters. 

The  changed  spirit  is  reflected,  too,  in  the  painter’s 
and  sculptor’s  arts.  No  longer  do  we  meet  saints 
whose  bodies  are  but  draped  pillars  or  stiffly  recum¬ 
bent  brasses  of  the  dead,  no  longer  starkly  upright 
Madonnas  and  wan  and  angular  Crucifixions;  but 
in  their  place  there  are  the  muscled  and  striving 
bodies  of  heroes  or  the  mutely  drooping  limbs  of 
sufferers,  there  are  the  limpid  fulness  and  delicate 
curves  of  the  tondi  of  Botticelli,  the  seraphic  fleet¬ 
ness  and  freedom  of  form  and  drapery  drawn  by 
the  hand  of  a  Raphael,  the  unappeasable  strength 
and  endeavor  of  Michelangelo’s  demigods.  Every¬ 
where  motion,  and  a  kind  of  soundless  jubilation  of 
those  hosts  released  at  last  from  their  long  servitude 
to  the  genius  of  meditative  repose. 

Such  is  the  change  of  spirit  which  the  Renaissance 
brings  to  letters  and  the  plastic  arts:  is  a  similar 
change  to  be  found  in  the  realm  of  music?  Need  I 
more  than  ask  the  question?  Instruments  were 
multiplied  and  perfected,  and  the  foundations  of  the 
orchestra  laid.  The  full  twelve  notes  of  the  chro¬ 
matic  scale  were  determined,  and  in  place  of  the 
angular  coincidences  of  the  old  contrapuntal  figures 
came  the  soft  chords  and  mellifluous  transitions  of 
harmony.  With  the  rising  art  of  the  theatric  stage — 
^‘tragedy,  comedy,  history,  pastoral,  pastoral-com- 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


395 


ical,  historical-pastoral,  tragical-historical,  tragical- 
comical-historical-pastoral,  scene  individable  or 
poem  unlimited,”  to  quote  Polonius’  expressive  cata¬ 
logue — came  the  no  less  prolific  and  various  art  of 
the  operatic  stage.  The  “organ-notes  of  Miltonic 
music”  are  not  unworthily  reflected  in  the  equally 
dignified  and  plastic  oratorio.  And  the  life  which 
was  moving  in  such  rapid  tempo  in  all  men’s  veins 
found  itself  embodied  again  in  the  vigorous  rhythms 
from  the  dances  of  countryside  and  court  to  become 
the  formative  soul  of  the  developing  sonata  and 
symphony. 

The  play-spirit  of  the  time — that  “jesting  spirit, 
....  now  crept  into  a  lute-string,  and  new-gov¬ 
erned  by  stops,”  as  Shakespeare  hath  it — appears 
alike  in  carol  and  roundelay,  serenade  and  fantasia, 
and  in  the  masques  and  mummeries  and  games  of 
courtly  love  wherein  sparkled  the  gaieties  of  the 
high-born. 

“The  fault  will  be  in  the  music,  cousin,  if  you  be  not  wooed 
in  good  time:  if  the  prince  be  too  important,  tell  him  there  is 
measure  in  everything,  and  so  dance  out  the  answer.  For  hear 
me,  Hero:  wooing,  wedding,  and  repenting,  is  as  a  Scotch  jig, 
a  measure,  and  a  cinque-pace;  the  first  suit  is  hot  and  hasty, 
like  a  Scotch  jig,  and  full  as  fantastical;  the  wedding,  mannerly- 
modest, — as  a  measure,  full  of  state  and  ancientry;  and  then 
comes  Repentance,  and  with  his  bad  legs  falls  into  the  cinque- 
pace  faster  and  faster,  till  he  sink  into  his  grave.” 

But  I  would  not  leave  you  with  this  tart  scolding 
of  our  Shakespeare  in  your  ears.  Rather  I  would 
have  you  carry  hence  the  ringing  echoes  of  that 
melodious  lyric  for  which  Henry  Purcell  has  left  so 
beautiful  a  setting: 


The  play 
spirit 


Much  Ado 
About 
Nothing, 
II.  i. 


396 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Lyric 

loveliness 


Neo- 

Classicism 


“Full  fathom  five  thy  father  lies; 

Of  his  bones  are  coral  made : 

Those  are  pearls  that  were  his  eyes : 

Nothing  of  him  that  doth  fade, 

But  doth  suffer  a  sea-change 
Into  something  rich  and  strange. 

Sea-nymphs  hourly  ring  his  knell : 

Hark!  now  I  hear  them, — 

Ding-dong,  bell  .  . 

Could  this  have  been  written  save  in  an  age  when 
men’s  souls  were  married  to  melody  and  all  the  world 
but  one  great  instrument  for  their  thoughts  to  play 
upon?  .  .  .  Nor  must  we  forget  Milton’s  no  less 
tuneful  praise  of  his  brother-poet,  as  in  his  poet’s 
dream  he  hears  .  .  . 

.  .  sweetest  Shakespeare,  Fancy’s  child. 

Warble  his  native  wood-notes  wild. 

And  ever,  against  eating  cares. 

Lap  me  in  soft  Lydian  airs. 

Married  to  immortal  verse. 

Such  as  the  meeting  soul  may  pierce. 

In  notes  with  many  a  winding  bout 
Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out 
With  wanton  heed  and  giddy  cunning. 

The  melting  voice  through  mazes  running. 
Untwisting  all  the  chains  that  tie 
The  hidden  soul  of  harmony.” 

Surely  in  those  days  the  poet  beheld  his  lovely 
Muse,  not  through  a  glass  darkly,  but  face  to  face! 

Ill 

The  age  of  Louis  le  Grand  saw  the  adoption  of 
Classicism,  as  the  Renaissance  Italians  understood 
it,  by  the  nations  of  trans- Alpine  Europe.  Like  the 
personality  of  the  great  Louis,  this  Neo-Classicism 
was,  even  in  its  inception,  grandiose  rather  than 
noble,  with  a  theatric  stress  upon  the  ‘^elevation,” 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


397 


the  fagade,  rather  than  a  real  care  for  significant 
structure  and  inner  sanity.  It  had  in  it  all  the  perils 
of  the  rococo  and  the  baroque  into  which  it  was  to 
degenerate  even  in  the  lifetime  of  le  grand  monarque. 
But  again  like  the  personality  of  the  great  Louis, 
it  had  its  own  dignity  and  power — coming,  I 
imagine,  from  the  state  which  made  the  importance 
of  the  I,  rather  than  from  the  stagy  little  ego  which 
had  become  wholly  absorbed  by  the  state.  It  was 
an  age  of  externals,  of  devotion  to  dress  and  man¬ 
ners,  to  form  and  formality,  in  the  spiritual  world 
as  in  the  political,  to  which  Louis  the  Fourteenth 
introduced  the  peoples  of  Europe. 

In  thinking  of  this  period,  our  imaginations  in¬ 
evitably  fill  with  the  ornate  costumes  which  the 
beaux  and  belles  of  a  time  when  all  were  beaux  and 
belles  loved  to  invent,  and  which  the  painters  pro¬ 
fusely  reproduced,  for  the  painter’s  art  was  now 
become  the  art  of  portraiture.  We  begin  with 
plumed  and  booted  cavaliers,  curled  love-locks  upon 
their  cheeks,  armed  with  long  rapier  and  slender 
misericorde ;  we  end  with  stout  gentlemen  of  rubi¬ 
cund  countenance,  frilled  and  powdered,  bewigged 
and  queued,  takers  of  snuff  and  frequenters  of 
polite  salons : — a  speaking  image  of  the  decline  from 
Classic  to  Baroque. 

Spiritually  the  era  from  the  days  of  Louis  to  the 
French  Revolution  was  an  era  in  which  wit  was 
more  valued  than  wisdom,  in  which  passion  gave 
place  to  sentimentality,  and  in  which  a  gloss  of 
complacency  oiled  the  surface  of  the  turbulent  deeps 
of  human  nature.  It  was  natural  that  the  great 
art  of  the  time  should  be  the  art  of  the  theatre — at 
least  in  a  country  like  France  which  had  had  no 


Classic  to 
Baroque 


Wit  and 
wisdom 


398 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Belles- 

lettres 


Music 


Bach  to 
Beethoven 


theatre;  and  there  we  find  the  stately  Alexandrines 
of  the  French  classical  drama — the  tragedy  of  Cor¬ 
neille  and  Racine,  the  merciless  gaiety  of  Moliere. 
And  it  was  natural  that  in  a  country  like  England, 
which  had  had  its  dramatic  flowering,  the  biting  if 
superficial  satire  of  Pope’s  polished  couplets,  the 
heady  liquor  of  Dean  Swift’s  lampoons,  should  fulfil 
the  mission  of  letters.  Polish,  wit,  an  immaculate 
surface,  and  a  mannered  easiness  which  makes  even 
brutality  palatable — these  were  qualities  attained  by 
the  most  devotedly  formal  of  all  the  centuries. 

And  what  of  music  during  this  period?  .  .  . 

Yes,  it  is  the  Classical  Age  of  music,  too, — ^but 
in  how  contradictory  a  sense! 

It  is  true  that  the  artificiality  and  formalism  of 
a  formal  and  artificial  period  was  bound  to  find  its 
reflection  in  the  art  of  music  as  in  the  other  arts. 
We  see  it  in  the  da  camera  temperament  of  the  art. 
It  is  no  longer  a  cathedral  art,  as  in  the  Middle 
Ages;  it  has  lost  the  open-air  exuberance  of  the 
Renaissance  ;  it  is  now  an  art  of  the  C oncertmeister 
and  Kapellmeister,  indoor  and  staid, — a  professional 
performance  to  be  listened  to  with  polite  ears  and 
responded  to  with  subdued  hand-clappings,  rather 
than  a  lover’s  song  to  be  heard  with  passionate  heart 
from  behind  the  window  lattice.  And  even  where 
it  is  interbound  with  the  dance,  music  is  still  formal 
and  almost  officiously  polite;  we  can  hardly  think 
of  gigue  or  sarabande,  minuet  or  gavotte,  except 
as  the  graceful  amusement  of  some  courtly  com¬ 
pany, — all  flavor  of  peasant  and  barbarian  is  gone. 

And  yet  this  is  the  period  in  which  was  passed 
the  life  of  Sebastian  Bach  and  which  saw  the  birth 
of  Ludwig  van  Beethoven,  the  period  in  which  were 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


399 


produced  Haydn’s  oratorios  and  Mozart’s  sonatas 
and  operas.  It  was  in  the  truest  and  greatest  sense 
the  classical  age  of  music. 

You  will  say,  and  I  will  agree,  that  the  art  of 
these  men,  too,  was  a  formal  and  architectonic  art, 
that  their  power  was  intellectual,  and  that  the  “abso¬ 
lute”  music  which  they  created  calls  into  action  the 
powers  of  the  understanding  even  more  than  the 
powers  of  the  heart.  In  all  this  they  are  at  one 
with  their  time. 

But  in  another  and  a  deeper  sense  the  great  music 
of  the  eighteenth  century  is  far  greater  than  the 
eighteenth  century.  For  I  believe  it  to  be  nobler 
and  more  enduring  than  any  other  artistic  achieve¬ 
ment  of  the  period.  In  a  period  of  dress  and  man¬ 
ners,  a  period  when  men  were  intellectually  sincere 
only  when  their  wit  was  being  spent  upon  the  foibles 
of  their  fellows,  a  new  and  great  art  was  born  to 
vindicate  the  eternal  sincerity  of  soul  which  is  the 
one  promise  of  an  eventual  human  redemption.  And 
the  grave  and  paternal  figure  of  John  Sebastian 
Bach  stands  out  as  that  of  the  one  man  of  his  time 
to  whom  the  world  owes  most. 

Some  of  you,  I  suspect,  will  be  holding  Goethe’s 
name  upon  your  lips.  And  it  would  be  foolish  to 
dispute  the  greatness  or  the  sincerity  of  Goethe’s 
poetic  utterance: 

“Uber  alien  Gipfein 
1st  Ruh’, 

In  alien  Wipfeln 
Spiirest  du 
Kaum  einen  Hauch ; 

Die  Vogelein  schweigen  im  Walde, 

Warte  nur,  balde 
Ruhest  du  auch.” 


Absolute 

music 


Goethe 


400 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Music 

and 

poetry 


Nineteenth- 

century 

art 


Goethe  is  a  great  poet,  but  Goethe,  like  Beethoven, 
is  as  much  of  the  romantic  nineteenth  century  as 
of  the  classic  eighteenth;  and  in  any  case,  great  as 
he  is,  can  we  say  that  Goethe  is  to  poetry  what  either 
Bach  or  Beethoven  is  to  music? 

I  will  not  say  no;  there  may  be  room  for  two 
opinions.  But  I  will  say  that  there  are  no  two 
figures  in  the  poetry  of  this  age  comparable  to  the 
makers  of  the  art  of  music — Bach  and  Beethoven. 

IV 

Everybody  knows  that  the  nineteenth  century  is 
called  “Romantic” ;  and  everybody  knows  that  the 
reasons  given  for  this  naming  are  as  many  as  there 
are  critics  of  nineteenth-century  art.  What  con¬ 
sensus  of  opinion  exists  is,  in  effect,  that  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century  is  Romantic  because  it  represents  a 
breaking-away  from  the  rigid  forms  and  canons  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  because  it  is  post-Classic. 
It  is  a  century  of  restlessness,  inner  and  outer,  of 
confused  and  chaotic  endeavor ;  and  its  moods  range 
from  the  introspective  reclusiveness  of  “the  soul 
immured  in  its  tower  of  ivory”  to  the  greasy  elbow- 
rubbing  of  bawling  democrats  or  the  plaintive  aloof¬ 
ness  of  the  great  Victorian  laureate.  The  virtue  of 
the  century  was  its  willingness  to  dare  all  things; 
its  weakness  and  besetting  sin  was  its  empty  striv¬ 
ings  after  empty  effects,  and  too  often  its  loud  satis¬ 
faction  in  the  emptiness  attained.  No  century  ever 
attempted  to  express  so  much;  no  century  ever  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  expressing  so  much;  yet  no  century,  I 
think,  leaves  us  less  satisfied  with  its  attainment. 
Did  the  nineteenth  century  produce  one  perfect 
work?  ....  Indeed,  I  doubt  it.  Beautiful  works 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


401 


there  are  a-many;  there  are  great  works  and  some 
that  deserve  the  name  sublime.  But  the  whole 
artistic  spirit  of  the  century  seems  starred  with  an 
inward  defect,  and  the  taint  of  mortality  affects 
even  its  greatest  productions.  When  we  think  of 
the  high  sufficiency  of  the  Psalms  of  David  or  of 
the  Song  of  Songs  which  is  Solomon’s,  when  we 
think  of  the  passionate  music  of  the  inimitable 
Sappho  or  of  the  still  and  white  intensity  of  the 
CBdipus  of  Sophocles,  when  we  call  to  mind  melo¬ 
dious  Vergil  or  the  marvelous  canzoni  of  him  who 
wrote, 

“Donne,  ch’avete  intelletto  d’amore, — “ 

the  whole  nineteenth  century  seems  somehow  lame 
and  halting;  and  listening  to  these  winged  words 
of  the  past,  we  are  willing  humbly  to  say  with 
Shelley  that  our 

“Chorus  Hymeneal, 

Or  triumphant  chant, 

Matched  with  thine  would  be  all 
But  an  empty  vaunt, 

A  thing  wherein  we  feel  there  is  some  hidden  want.” 

I  can  think  of  no  better  image  of  the  “Progress 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century”  than  to  call  before  your 
imagination  a  series  of  the  great  paintings  which 
mark  the  stages  of  this  most  coloristic  of  periods. 
We  will  begin  with  David’s  Madame  Recamier — 
perhaps  the  supreme  achievement  of  French 
Academism, — with  its  high  and  fine  care  for  design, 
beauty  of  line  and  grace  of  composition,  and  its  cool 
indifference  to  luxury  of  tone.  From  the  period 
that  follows  the  era  of  Napoleon,  we  will  remember 
such  various  endeavors  as  the  haunting  and  horrid 


/ 


Mortal 

quality 


Academism 


402 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Romantic 

school 


Impres¬ 

sionism 


Poetry 


Raft  of  the  Medusa  of  Gericault,  the  soft  and  sensu¬ 
ous  Birth  of  Venus  of  Cabanel,  perhaps  a  brilliantly 
red  and  blue  and  white  and  gold  symbol  of  the  age 
of  chivalry  and  song,  like  Le  Chant  d' Amour  of 
Burne-Jones : 

*‘Helas !  Je  sais  un  chant  d’amour, 

Triste  ou  gai,  tour  a  tour,” — 

and  thence  we  will  go  on  to  that  most  characteristic 
of  all  nineteenth-century  art-forms,  the  landscape, 
remembering  a  leafy  Constable,  a  gorgeously  pris¬ 
matic  Turner,  a  sibilant  and  dreamy  Corot,  a  Millet 
with  its  sombre  peasants  immingled  with  the  very 
flesh  of  nature.  And  then  we  will  pass  on  to  the 
impressionists — a  Manet  or  a  Monet,  seeing  their 
world  not  as  a  complex  of  lines  and  forms,  but  as 
a  world  of  shimmering  lights;  and  then  a  ^‘Noc¬ 
turne”  or  a  “Symphony”  by  Whistler,  proclaiming 
the  kinship  of  the  artist  in  colors  and  the  artist  in 
tones;  and  then  a  Cezanne,  giddy  with  strange 
spaces,  a  Degas,  mad  with  motion;  and  finally  the 
whole  topsy-turvydom  of  the  post-impressionists — 
primitivists,  futurists,  cubists,  oblivious  to  all  save 
the  impossible  in  their  art — chaotic  color,  chaotic 
light,  chaotic  motion,  chaotic  thought. 

What  shall  we  say  of  nineteenth-century  poe¬ 
try?  ..  . 

In  England  the  Romantic  movement  begins  with 
the  eager  and  visionary  Shelley,  championing  the 
rights  of  man  and  ignorant  of  human  nature;  with 
the  disdainful  Byron,  knowing  men  and  despising 
them ;  with  the  solemn  and  childish,  yet  nobly 
meditative  Wordsworth,  seeing  nature  as  the  land¬ 
scape  painters  saw  it;  with  Coleridge,  obsessed  by 
strange  spirits;  and  Keats  alert  in  every  sense  to 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


403 


the  delicate  impressions  of  a  flowered  and  honeyed 
outer  world. 

Hard  upon  these  comes  the  great  Victorian  group 
— more  intellectual,  less  hopeful  and  beautiful —  Victorians 
Tennyson,  graceful,  euphonious,  timid,  and  uncom¬ 
fortable — a  mixture  of  beauty  and  disproportion, 
like  to  some  exotic  animal  freed  to  browse  in  strange 
gardens;  Browning,  lungfully  clamorous,  with  a 
busy  brain  and  an  awkward  pen;  the  contained  and 
satisfied  Arnold  and  the  quiet  but  troubled  Landor, 
each,  in  his  own  way,  striving  to  make  green  again 
the  bays  of  Hellas;  and  the  half-acclimated  Fitz¬ 
Gerald  bringing  musk  and  myrrh  from  the  ancient 
tombs  of  the  East. 

And  then  the  final  period :  Kipling,  and  his 
anthropology;  Swinburne,  and  such  verbal  music  Fin  de  sihle 
as  no  English  poet  had  dared  to  dream ;  the  bitter 
Henley,  the  humane  Stevenson,  Austin  Dobson, 
light  and  recherche;  the  mystical  and  Catholic 
Francis  Thompson,  recalling  Richard  Crashawe; 
the  Celtic  Mr.  Yeats,  enamored  of  fay  and  faery; 
the  stoutly  British  William  Watson,  damning  Abdul 
Hamid  and  lamenting  that 

“But  yesterday  was  Man  from  Eden  driven.” 

I  have  named  but  a  few  from  each  of  these 
periods,  but  are  they  not  enough  to  illustrate  how, 
as  the  century  aged,  the  spirit  of  poetry  grew  more 
restless  and  uncertain,  passed  from  the  familiar  to 
the  strange,  seeking  in  other  lands  than  their  own 
and  in  other  moods  than  men  had  known  before, 
that  consolation  of  beauty  which  their  living  years 
somehow  denied  them? 

Is  there  a  third  parallel  in  the  art  of  music?  .  .  . 


404 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Modern 

music 


Romance 


Folk- 

music 


At  the  beginning  of  the  century  stands  the 
colossus,  Beethoven,  creator,  one  might  say,  of  the 
modern  orchestra,  and  the  very  image  of  nobility 
in  music.  Following,  and  not  unworthy  of  the  suc¬ 
cession,  comes  Schubert;  and  you  will  recall  the 
sublime  chords  which  open  the  “Unfinished  Sym¬ 
phony”  in  B  Minor — reminding  one  of  the  grandeur 
of  Genesis, 

“And  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters.” 

Schumann  and  Chopin,  who  are  to  the  pianoforte 
what  Beethoven  is  to  the  orchestra,  are  next  in 
descent,  and  with  Brahms,  who  continues  the  great 
tradition  of  German  music,  both  for  grandeur  and 
architectonic  form,  the  group  of  the  proud  pre¬ 
eminent  is  complete. 

After  the  Giants  the  Titans!  Tschaikowsky  and 
Wagner  is  each  huge — the  Russian  in  things  ele¬ 
mental  and  eternal — the  illimitable  sweep  of  the 
steppes,  the  deeps  of  a  barbaric  folk-soul  brooding 
forever  its  immemorial  past;  the  German  in  the 
scarce  less  ancient  myths,  filled  with  tenebrous 
shadows,  shot  with  lurid  lights,  of  the  old  northern 
forests  and  the  old  Scandinavian  hills. 

And  then,  in  the  great  operatic  capitals,  those 
minglers  of  romance  and  music:  Verdi,  Gounod, 
Berlioz,  Bizet ;  and  on  the  outskirts,  those  who  resur¬ 
rected  the  souls  of  peasant-folk,  and  primitive  folk, 
as  Grieg  for  Norway,  Dvorak  for  Bohemia,  Pade¬ 
rewski  for  Poland,  and  our  own  Macdowell  for  the 
autochthonous  peoples  of  America. 

Finally,  we  have  the  new  schools,  striving  to  tell 
in  tone  what  tones  have  never  told,  headed  by 
Strauss,  clamorous  and  violent  and  wilful,  and  by 


MUSIC  AND  POETRY 


405 


the  shy  Debussy,  full  of  furtive  and  evasive  moods, 
indirect,  fitful,  fantastic,  yet  with  a  siren  loveliness 
that  draws  one  on  in  its  vain  pursuit  forever. 

Such,  as  best  I  can  describe  it,  has  been  the  parallel 
course  of  the  three  arts  in  the  century  gone.  All 
alike  begin  with  a  broad,  dignified,  still  formal  and 
contained  art,  firm  and  resonant  from  the  tempering 
past.  Alike  all  pass  from  this  formal  centrality  into 
a  wide-wandering  search  for  new  themes,  new  im¬ 
pressions,  new  modes  of  expression,  and  new  artistic 
convictions.  At  the  end  of  their  journey ings  they 
have  enriched  us — painting  and  poetry  and  music, 
each — with  powers  of  technique  unimagined  by 
previous  periods  and  with  adventures  of  expression 
by  no  man  heretofore  attempted. 

But  for  all  this,  in  each  art,  there  is  an  inescapable 
flavor  of  decline.  The  last  end  is  in  some  discon¬ 
solate  sense  less  sufficient  than  the  first:  we  feel 
that  the  imagination  of  the  century  has  greatly 
attempted,  but  we  feel,  too,  that  it  has  failed,  though 
greatly. 

And  the  final  ebullition — strenuosities  of  cubical 
painting,  iridescences  of  symbolist  verse,  nervous 
tensities  and  moody  changes  of  coloristic  music — 
this  final  moil  and  hurry  seems  little  more  than  the 
froth  of  spent  seas. 

Perhaps  I  am  wrong  in  this  .  .  .  some  of  you 
may  think  it  is  the  swift  on-rush  of  the  renewed 
tide  ...  as  at  times,  I  confess,  I  myself  feel  and 
hope.  But  whether  it  be  the  beginning  of  the  new 
or  the  falling  away  of  the  old,  we  will  not  despair 
of  the  future  of  the  arts.  ^^Art  is  long,”  you  have 
oft  been  told;  and  we  need  only  to  remember  that 
it  is  born  of  instincts  which,  as  Aristotle  says,  are 


Parallels 


Flavor 
of  decline 


27 


406 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


“Deep  in 
our  natures" 


''deep  in  our  natures,’’  in  order  to  look  forward  with 
serene  confidence  to  the  continued  realization  of 
beauty  by  the  mind  of  man. 


I 


XIL  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF 
TRAGEDY 

I 

WE  all  remember  Polonius’  introduction  of 
“the  best  actors  in  the  world,  either  for 
tragedy,  comedy,  history,  pastoral,  pastoral- 
comical,  historical-pastoral,  tragical-historical, 
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral,  scene  indi- 
vidable,  or  poem  unlimited.”  And  if  we  have  not 
been  able  to  follow  in  its  detail  so  nice  a  sub¬ 
division  of  dramatic  art,  I  presume  that  most  of 
us  have,  at  one  time  or  another,  made  some  less 
ambitious  classification  of  our  own.  At  least  we 
have  recognized  the  broad  distinction  between 
the  domains  of  Thalia  and  Melpomene,  and  we 
have  asked  ourselves,  perhaps,  by  what  subtle 
fascination  the  laughter  and  tears  of  the  theatre 
do  so  englamour  the  imaginations  of  men,  hold¬ 
ing  us  in  the  thrall  of  illusion,  and  sending  us, 
willing  dreamers,  to  wander  in  fields  remote 
from  the  serious  duties  of  life. 

It  is  with  this  question  that  I  would  deal:  by 
what  philosophy  can  we  explain  or  justify  the 
sincere  concern  with  which  the  men  of  so  many 
generations  have  turned  their  eyes  to  the  stage? 
Why  should  men  of  genius  have  so  prized  the 
players’  mimic  hours  that  they  should  have  been 
willing  to  give  the  best  of  their  effort  to  the 
theatre?  And  why  should  mankind,  in  reflective 
appraisement,  place  its  dramatic  literatures 

407 


Thalia 

and 

Melpomene 


408 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


SO  near  to  supremacy  among  things  humanly 
precious? 

The  answer  to  such  questions  is  by  no  means 
simple.  It  must  rest  upon  a  philosophy  that 
can  comprehend  all  the  ends  and  forms  of  life 
and  give  to  each  its  fitting  value.  It  may  begin 
with  a  merely  aesthetic  theory,  but  it  can  cease 
only  with  an  insight  into  the  nature  and  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  world.  It  is  small  wonder  that  the 
greatest  of  philosophers  have  found  this  theme 
worthy  of  their  study;  and  it  is  less  wonder,  per¬ 
haps,  that  only  the  greatest  have  been  able  to 
give  solutions  that  have  appealed  widely  to 
men’s  minds. 

II 


Aristotle 

on 

tragedy — 
Poetics,  VI 


^‘Tragedy” — and  I  am  quoting  S.  H.  Butcher’s 
justly  praised  version  of  Aristotle’s  famous  defi¬ 
nition — 


“tragedy,  then,  is  an  imitation  of  an  action  that  is  serious,  com¬ 
plete,  and  of  a  certain  magnitude ;  in  language  embellished 
with  each  kind  of  artistic  ornament,  the  several  kinds  being 
found  in  separate  parts  of  the  play;  in  the  form  of  action,  not 
of  narrative;  through  pity  and  fear  effecting  the  proper  purga¬ 
tion  of  these  emotions.” 


Upon  every  phrase  of  this  definition  have  been 
written  volumes  of  commentary.  It  would  be 
futile  in  a  brief  space  to  attempt  even  to  call 
attention  to  the  problems  involved;  nor  is  it 
necessary  to  do  so  in  order  to  get  at  the  root 
of  Aristotle’s  philosophic  conception,  for  this  is 
defined,  if  not  clearly,  yet  unmistakably,  by  two 
phrases,  the  first  and  the  last  of  the  definition. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


409 


“Tragedy  is  an  imitation  of  an  action” — this  is 
the  first;  “through  pity  and  fear  effecting  the 
proper  purgation  of  these  erhotions” — this  is 
the  last;  and  as  the  first  gives  us  the  key  to 
Aristotle’s  conception  of  the  essential  nature  of 
tragedy,  so  the  last  gives  us  his  conception  of 
its  justifying  purpose,  first  and  last  together 
answering  the  “What?”  and  “Why?”  which 
seem  to  form  the  native  sequence  of  interroga¬ 
tion  on  all  matters  which  stir  our  human 
curiosity. 

When  Aristotle  calls  tragedy  an  “imitation,” 
he  is  but  echoing  the  speech  of  his  time;  for  the 
Greeks  regarded  not  only  the  drama  but  all 
forms  of  artistic  expression  as  forms  of  mimesis, 
as  “imitations”  of  things  and  actions.  Thus, 
the  Greek  dances,  from  which  drama  takes  its 
origin,  were  conceived  as  a  play  of  expression, 
imitative  because  induced  through  art.  Plato 
says : 

“Choric  movements  are  imitations  of  manners  occurring  in 
various  actions,  fortunes,  dispositions, — each  particular  is 
imitated,  and  those  to  whom  the  words,  or  songs,  or  dances  are 
suited,  either  by  nature  or  habit  or  both,  cannot  help  feeling 
pleasure  in  them  and  applauding  them,  and  calling  them  beauti¬ 
ful.” 

Similarly,  music  was  felt  to  be  an  imitation  of 
the  mood  or  disposition  which  it  stirred,  and 
especially  amongst  the  Platonists,  to  each  of 
the  recognized  modes  was  assigned  a  gamut  of 
imitated  feeling:  the  Dorian  mode  exemplified 
dignity  and  courage,  the  Phrygian  wildness  and 
excitment,  the  ^olian  warlike  turbulence,  the 
Lydian  effeminacy, — 


Imitation 


The  dance 


Greek 

modes 


410 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


“Lap  me  in  soft  Lydian  airs, 

Married  to  immortal  verse 

Such  as  the  meeting  soul  may  pierce 

In  notes,  with  many  a  winding  bout 

Of  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out.  .  . 


Imitation 

in 

painting 


Plato’s 

conception 


The  conception  of  the  imitative  office  of  the 
art  of  painting  w^as  even  more  naive.  Excellence 
in  this  art  seemed  in  large  part  to  lie  in  its  power 
of  producing  illusion.  Apollodorus,  whose  light- 
and-shade  effects  superseded  the  earlier  work 
in  line  and  flat  tones,  earned  the  epithet  of 
^‘shadow-painter’^  because  he  painted  men  as 
they  appear  to  be;  Zeuxis  is  said  to  have  de¬ 
picted  grapes  so  realistically  that  the  birds 
pecked  at  them;  and  Plato,  in  an  ironical  vein, 
likens  the  art  of  the  painter  to  that  of  a  man 
who  creates  all  things  by  the  simple  expedient 
of  turning  a  mirror  upon  all  in  succession. 

Thus  the  earlier  and  commoner  meaning  of 
“imitation,”  among  the  Greeks,  was  something 
very  nearly  the  same  as  what  we  mean  by 
“realism”  in  art.  But  when  Aristotle  speaks  of 
tragedy  as  an  “imitation  of  an  action,”  he  has 
in  mind  something  more  subtle  and  philosophi¬ 
cal.  As  with  most  of  his  conceptions,  the  sug¬ 
gestion  comes  from  Plato.  Plato  had  conceived 
the  world  of  sense  and  feeling — the  world  with 
which  our  five  senses  acquaint  us  and  in  which 
cur  daily  affairs  center, — not  as  the  reality  which 
common-sense  tells  us  that  it  is,  but  as  an  im¬ 
perfect  copy  or  “imitation”  of  the  true  reality  of 
which  mind  alone  can  give  us  knowledge.  I 
might  illustrate  Plato’s  notion  by  the  article  of 
furniture  whose  sensible  reality  is  the  chair  or 
table  which  we  see  and  use,  but  whose  sub- 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


411 


atantial  reality,  the  chemist  will  tell  us,  is  the 
molecular  structure  of  its  materials,  visible  only 
in  the  light  of  reason;  the  molecular  substruc¬ 
ture  is  thus  the  true  form,  or  reality,  of  what 
we  grossly  perceive  as  a  thing  of  sense,  or  of 
which  our  senses  may  be  said  to  give  us  the 
imperfect  copy.  Thus  the  world  of  sense  be¬ 
comes  a  world  of  appearance  and  illusion, 
vaguely  imitative  of  the  invisible  reality  which 
we  know  through  ideas  only. 

This  Platonic  philosophy  Aristotle  adopted, 
but  with  an  important  modification.  For  Plato 
had  held  that  the  world  of  sense  and  the  world 
of  ideas  have  nothing  genuinely  in  common, 
that  they  are  indeed  as  remote  from  one  another 
as  the  difference  between  a  chair  and  an  aggre¬ 
gate  of  molecules  would  suggest,  and  that  the 
most  we  can  hope  in  the  midst  of  the  world  of 
sense  is  to  be  able  to  correct  something  of  its 
outer  illusoriness  by  a  main  reliance  upon  inward 
reason.  It  was  because  of  this  deep  distrust 
of  sense  that  Plato  condemned  so  relentlessly  the 
whole  motif  of  art;  imitating,  as  it  does,  he  says, 
not  the  reality,  but  only  imperfect  and  deceptive 
copies  of  realities,  namely,  the  things  of  sense 
and  feeling,  it  conduces  not  to  knowledge  but  to 
deception,  and  is  ‘ffhrice  removed  from  the  king 
and  the  truth.”  For  which  reason  Plato  rigidly 
banned  all  forms  of  art,  save  such  as  gave  moral 
lessons,  from  his  ideal  republic. 

But  Aristotle,  while  he  adopted  Plato’s  phi¬ 
losophy  in  its  general  outlines,  was  unwilling  to 
follow  in  his  sharp  division  of  the  sensible 
world  and  the  real;  rather,  he  maintained,  while 


Plato’s 

motive 


Aristotle’s 

modification 


412 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Retort  to 

Plato’s 

challenge 


Republic, 

607 


it  is  true  that  our  senses  do  deceive  us,  while  it 
is  true  that  sensible  things  are  but  imitations  of 
the  essential  reality,  still  even  as  imitations  they 
bear  some  impress  of  the  forms  which  they  im¬ 
perfectly  represent;  and  the  whole  discipline  of 
knowledge  consists  in  our  ability  so  to  profit  by 
our  experience  of  illusion  as  to  be  able  at  last 
to  discern  the  ideal  nature  which  is  dimly  present 
in  the  most  deceptive  phenomena  of  sense.  Plato 
had  cut  the  universe  sharply  into  a  realm  of  ideal 
reality  and  a  realm  of  sensible  illusion;  but  na¬ 
ture,  says  Aristotle,  is  not,  like  a  bad  tragedy, 
constructed  of  episodes;  it  is  one  connected,  and 
dramatic,  whole. 

In  this  philosophy  of  Aristotle’s  the  idea  of 
“imitation”  loses  the  somewhat  derogatory  cast 
which  it  possesses  with  Plato  ;  it  is  no  longer  the 
fault  of  sensible  things  that  they  are  but  im¬ 
perfect  copies,  deceptive  imitations;  it  is  their 
virtue  that  they  can  imitate  the  ideal  reality,  and 
so  give  us  the  clues  of  knowledge,  leading  us  to 
the  truth.  So  conceiving  imitation,  Aristotle 
was  in  the  way  to  answer  Plato’s  strictures  upon 
art;  and  I  make  little  question  that  Aristotle’s 
Poetics  is  his  direct  acceptance  of  the  challenge 
which  Plato  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Socrates  in 
the  tenth  book  of  the  Republic.  Socrates  has  just 
ruled,  for  the  reasons  which  we  have  stated, 
that  poetry  must  be  banished  from  the  ideal 
state;  but  he  goes  on  to  say  of  her: 

“Let  us  assure  our  sweet  friend  and  the  sister  arts  of  imita¬ 
tion,  that  if  she  will  only  prove  her  title  to  exist  in  a  well- 
ordered  state  we  shall  be  delighted  to  receive  her — we  are  very 
conscious  of  her  charms;  but  we  may  not  on  that  account  be¬ 
tray  the  truth .  And  we  may  further  grant  to  those  of 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


413 


her  defenders  who  are  lovers  of  poetry  and  yet  not  poets  the 
permission  to  speak  in  prose  in  her  behalf :  let  them  show  that 
she  is  not  only  pleasant  but  also  useful  to  states  and  to  human 

life,  and  we  will  listen  in  a  kindly  spirit .  We  too  are 

inspired  by  that  love  of  poetry  which  the  education  of  noble 
states  has  implanted  in  us,  and  therefore  we  would  have  her 
appear  at  her  best  and  truest ;  but  so  long  as  she  is  unable  to 
make  good  her  defence,  this  argument  of  ours  shall  be  a  charm 
to  us,  which  we  will  repeat  to  ourselves  while  we  listen  to  her 
strains ;  that  we  may  not  fall  away  into  the  childish  love  of 
her  which  captivates  the  many.” 


This  is  the  challenge  which  Aristotle  accepts 
— as  Sidney  and  Shelley  and  our  own  poet  Wood- 
berry  have  also  accepted  it  in  their  several 
Defences  of  poesy.  And  Aristotle  is  in  a  position 
to  make  good  his  defence  on  the  basis  of  his 
reinterpretation  of  the  meaning  of  ‘‘imitation.” 
For  with  him,  as  we  have  seen,  “imitation,”  as 
we  find  it  in  nature,  is  the  key  to  our  under¬ 
standing  of  what  is  ideal  and  perfect  in  nature; 
it  is  the  guide  to  truth.  And  if  such  is  the  case 
with  the  works  of  nature  in  general,  how  shall  it 
be  less  the  case  with  the  works  of  human  nature, 
and  especially  of  our  clearest  expression  of  hu¬ 
man  ideals  in  works  of  art?  Plainly  it  is  the 
mission  of  art  also,  even  from  its  imitative  char¬ 
acter,  to  lead  us  into  the  ways  of  truth  and 
understanding. 

Art,  then,  according  to  Aristotle,  is  an  imita¬ 
tion  of  nature,  not  in  her  outward  and  sensible 
forms,  but  in  her  inner  and  essential  meanings, 
in  her  ideal  character.  And  he  praises  art  in 
proportion  to  its  truth  to  this  ideal  character. 
Our  youth,  he  says,  should  be  familiarized  with 
the  works  of  the  painter  Polygnotus,  for  Poly- 
gnotus  depicts  men,  not  realistically  as  does 


Defense 
of  Poesy 


Idealization 
in  art 


414 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Meanings 
of  ideal 


Aristotle’s 

activism 


Dionysius,  nor  satirically  as  does  Pauson,  but  as 
“better  than  they  are,”  as  idealized  men.  For 
the  same  reason  tragedy  is  a  loftier  form  of  art 
than  comedy,  for  the  writers  of  comedies  de¬ 
mean  their  characters,  while  the  tragic  poet  is  a 
creator  of  heroes. 

Nor  must  we  think  that  Aristotle  is  here  con¬ 
fusing  two  senses  of  the  word  “ideal” — the  sense 
in  which  it  designates  “the  stuff  that  dreams  are 
made  of”  with  the  sense  in  which  it  means  what 
ought  to  be.  For  these  two  meanings  were 
naturally  identical  in  Aristotle’s  philosophy. 
This  philosophy  is  what  we  moderns  would  call 
an  activistic  philosophy;  the  very  essence  of  real¬ 
ity,  according  to  it,  is  action,  movement,  de¬ 
velopment;  reality  does  not  consist  in  being 
present,  but  in  being  promised;  reality  is  the 
form,  or  ideal,  toward  which,  through  material 
imperfection,  the  world  is  ever  striving.  “Action 
is  the  goal,  and  actuality  is  action,”  is  his  own 
phrasing.  And  because  the  end  of  enlightened 
desire  and  the  formal  objects  of  wisdom  are  both 
dependencies  of  this  natural  genesis,  the  two 
meanings  of  “ideal”  coalesce. 

This  same  activistic  view  of  nature  leads 
Aristotle  to  count  tragic  drama  as  first  among 
the  arts.  “For  tragedy,”  he  says,  in  one  of  the 
most  notable  passages  of  literature,  “is  an  imi¬ 
tation  not  of  men,  but  of  an  action  and  of  life; 
and  life  is  essentially  an  action,  not  a  quality.” 
The  drama  is  great  because  it  is  an  imitation, 
not  of  physical  forms,  but  of  evolutional  motifs, 
because  it  is  the  completest  image  art  can  give 
of  that  life  whose  true  being  is,  as  Plato  had  said. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


415 


not  in  the  world  of  sense,  but  in  the  world  of 
spirit. 

I  cannot  dwell  upon  all  the  subtleties  of  this  Poetic 
conception.  I  can  only  point  out  that  from  it 
flows  that  odd  Aristotelian  rule  that  the  poet 
should  prefer  a  “probable  impossibility”  to  an 
improbable  fact,  and  again  his  sagacious  saying 
that  “poetry  is  a  more  philosophical  and  a  higher 
thing  than  history:  for  poetry  tends  to  express 
the  universal,  history  the  particular.”  It  is  the 
universal  alone  which  possesses  probability;  it 
is  the  universal  alone  which  is  truly  knowable; 
and  in  a  world  whose  universals  are  acts,  not 
things,  that  art  which  deals  directly  with  action 
— governed  by  the  law  of  reason,  which  is  the 
law  of  probability — will  give  us  our  maturest  in¬ 
sights  into  the  truths  of  life. 

Thus  in  his  very  definition  of  tragedy,  Aris¬ 
totle  has  retorted  upon  Plato.  Fidelity  to  truth 
and  to  the  ideal  reality  Plato  had  made  the 
ground  for  his  rejection  of  poetic  art;  but  the 
highest  fidelity  to  truth  calls  for  this  very  art, 
says  Aristotle,  for  the  poet’s  imitations  of  life 
are  our  most  capable  guides  to  the  spiritual  truth 
of  nature. 

Ill 

Our  first  question  is  answered.  Tragedy  is  an  Tragic 
imitation  of  an  action, — an  imitation  not  for  the 
sake  of  producing  an  illusion  of  motion,  as  is  the 
case  with  the  cinematograph,  but  an  imitation 
designed  to  reveal  to  us  nature’s  actuating  ideals 
in  so  far  as  these  are  manifest  in  our  human  con¬ 
stitution.  The  tragic  stage  is  a  mirror,  but  it  is 


416 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Aristotle’s 

phrase 


Pity  and 
fear 


the  magic  mirror  which  reflects  back  to  us 
neither  the  bravery  of  our  outward  shows  nor 
the  humility  of  our  outward  asceticisms,  but  only 
the  naked  truth  of  our  inward  dispositions. 

What,  then,  of  our  second  question?  What 
is  the  purpose  of  tragedy?  ....  You  will  re¬ 
call  the  phrase  in  which  Aristotle  answers  it: 
‘‘through  pity  and  fear  effecting  the  proper 
purgation  of  these  emotions.’’  Probably  no 
phrase  in  the  writings  of  Aristotle  and  few 
phrases  in  literature  have  occasioned  so  much 
discussion  as  has  this  one, — the  main  reason  for 
it  being  that  the  passages  in  which  Aristotle 
doubtless  expounded  his  meaning  belong  to  the 
lost  portion  of  his  work.  In  a  recent  edition  of 
Aristotle’s  Poetics,  perhaps  the  most  scholarly 
yet  produced,  the  late  Ingram  Bywater  collates 
more  than  fifty  versions  of  Aristotle’s  phrase, 
dating  from  the  edition  of  Paccius  in  1527  to 
that  of  Hatzfeld  and  Dufour  in  1899.  Bywater’s 
own  rendering  is  that  tragedy  must  be  fur¬ 
nished  “with  incidents  arousing  pity  and  fear, 
wherewith  to  accomplish  the  catharsis  of  such 
emotions.” 

A  comparison  of  the  two  translations  which 
I  have  quoted — viz.,  “through  pity  and  fear  ef¬ 
fecting  the  proper  purgation  of  these  emotions,” 
and,  “arousing  pity  and  fear  ....  to  accom¬ 
plish  its  catharsis  of  such  emotions” — will  reveal 
certain  of  the  differences  that  have  animated 
the  commentators.  Does  Aristotle  mean  that 
just  pity  and  fear,  and  no  other  emotions,  are 
to  be  aroused  and  purged  by  tragedy?  or  does 
he  intend,  as  Bywater’s  version  indicates,  that 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


417 


pity  and  fear  are  to  be  taken  as  typical  of  the 
kind  of  emotions  appropriate  to  tragedy?  Much 
controversial  powder  has  been  burned  over  this 
question,  and  indeed  it  is  not  altogether  so  trivial 
an  issue  as  at  first  sight  it  may  appear;  never¬ 
theless,  Aristotle  mentions  explicitly  but  these 
two  emotions,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  we  might 
properly  assume  that  he  meant  no  more, — at  the 
same  time  allowing  that  for  the  Greek  as  for  us 
the  vocabulary  of  emotion  was  essentially  a 
meagre  one,  giving  small  measure  of  the  infinite 
range  of  feeling  as  we  namelessly  know  it,  so 
that  Aristotle’s  conception  of  fear  might  well  in¬ 
clude  the  whole  gradation  from  panic  terror  to 
reverential  awe  while  his  idea  of  pity  could  well 
comprise  horror  and  shock  at  the  one  extreme 
and  an  almost  divinely  impersonal  compassion 
at  the  other:  with  such  elasticity  of  application 
open,  the  precise  phrasing  becomes  a  secondary 
matter. 

We  may  say  as  much  for  another  difference 
that  marks  the  two  versions.  Professor  Butcher 
interprets  Aristotle  as  claiming  for  tragedy  ‘‘the 
proper  purgation”  of  pity  and  fear;  Professor 
Bywater  substitutes  “its  catharsis,”  or  purgation, 
meaning  that  there  are  other  arts  than  tragedy 
which  may  purge  the  emotions.  Undoubtedly 
Aristotle  did  recognize  for  other  arts  than  drama 
the  function  of  purgation,  or  catharsis,  just  as 
he  recognized  that  other  arts  than  drama  are 
imitative  arts;  indeed,  we  may  always  say  that 
what  Aristotle  asserts  of  tragedy  in  a  genera] 
sense,  as  a  form  of  art,  he  would  assert  with 
equal  generality  of  other  forms  of  art;  his  treat- 


Vocabu- 
lary  of 
emotion 


418 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Ethical 

melodies 


Catharsis 


ment  of  tragedy  is  the  key  to  his  whole  theory 
of  art.  Thus,  in  the  Politics,  he  says  of  music : 

“In  education  ethical  melodies  are  to  be  preferred,  but  we 
may  listen  to  the  melodies  of  action  and  passion  when  they  are 
performed  by  others.  For  feelings  such  as  pity  and  fear,  or, 
again,  enthusiasm,  exist  very  strongly  in  some  souls,  and  have 
more  or  less  influence  over  all.  Some  persons  fall  into  a  re¬ 
ligious  frenzy,  whom  we  see  disenthralled  by  the  use  of  mystic 
melodies,  which  bring  healing  and  purgation  to  the  soul.  Those 
who  are  influenced  by  pity  or  fear  and  every  emotional  nature 
have  a  like  experience,  others  in  their  degree  are  stirred  by 
something  which  specially  affects  them,  and  all  are  in  a  man¬ 
ner  purged  and  their  souls  lightened  and  delighted.” 

But  if  the  general  function  of  art  is  thus  a 
catharsis  of  the  emotions,  and  tragedy  possesses 
this  function  most  capably  only  as  being  the 
loftiest  of  the  arts,  what  are  we  to  say  is  Aris¬ 
totle’s  understanding  of  the  process?  And  why 
is  it  a  good?  The  real  difficulties  with  Aris¬ 
totle’s  phrase  lie  in  this  one  word  catharsis, 
which  has  been  the  talk  of  generations  of  critics. 
In  what  sense  can  art  act  as  a  purge  or  cathartic 
for  our  emotional  nature,  and  what  can  so 
strange  a  metaphor  mean  when  applied  to  feel¬ 
ings  such  as  pity  and  fear? 

Among  the  critics  there  are  two  dominant 
interpretations  of  this  metaphor  of  Aristotle’s. 
The  one  group  gives  the  figure  of  a  purge  as 
near  a  literal  interpretation  as  is  possible  in  the 
connection.  Aristotle  belonged  to  a  family  of 
physicians,  and  the  Greek  medical  term  catharsis 
is  rendered  by  its  English  equivalent  purgation. 
The  use  of  the  term  in  reference  to  pity  and 
fear  implies,  says  Bywater,  ^‘the  tacit  assump¬ 
tion  ....  that  the  emotions  in  question  are 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


419 


analogous  to  those  peccant  humours  in  the  body 
which,  according  to  the  ancient  humoral  theory 
of  medicine,  have  to  be  expelled  from  the  sys¬ 
tem  by  the  appropriate  catharsis.”  The  other 
group  of  critics  render  Aristotle’s  term  by  the 
word  purification  or  the  Latin  lustration,  under¬ 
standing  it  to  mean  something  analogous  to  a 
religious  purification  of  the  soul  from  its  drosser 
passions.  The  great  name  of  Lessing  is  to  be 
found  among  the  supporters  of  this  interpre¬ 
tation. 

Between  these  two  opinions — each  of  which,  it 
appears  to  me,  could  be  bettered  by  supplement¬ 
ing  philology  with  some  salt  of  psychological 
insight — there  may  be  a  middle  view  that  will 
appeal  to  us  as  Aristotle’s  more  reasonable 
meaning.  But  before  stating  it,  let  us  recur  to 
some  of  the  historical  antecedents  of  his  thought. 

Aristoxenos  tells  us  that  the  Pythagoreans 
employed  music  to  purge  the  soul  as  they  used 
medicine  to  purge  the  body.  This  Pythagorean 
spiritual  catharsis  is  clearly  the  source  of  Aris¬ 
totle’s  conception;  for  Plato,  in  whose  works  it 
also  appears,  was  as  familiar  with  the  thought 
of  the  followers  of  Pythagoras  as  was  Aristotle 
with  Plato’s  philosophy.  It  is  in  a  passage  of  the 
Laws  that  Plato  describes  what  must  have  been 
the  Pythagorean  understanding  of  the  process. 
Plato  is  speaking  of  the  affinity  of  motion  and 
life : 

“Infants  should  live,  if  that  were  possible,  as  if  they  were 
always  rocking  at  sea.  This  is  the  lesson  which  we  may 
gather  from  the  experience  of  nurses,  and  likewise  from  the 
use  of  the  remedy  of  motion  in  the  rites  of  the  Corybantes; 
for  when  mothers  want  their  restless  children  to  go  to  sleep 


Purification 


Aristoxenos 

on 

Pythago¬ 

rean 

music 


Children 

and 

Maenads 


Enthusiasm 


420  nature  and  human  nature 

they  do  not  employ  rest,  but,  on  the  contrary,  motion — rocking 
them  in  their  arms ;  nor  do  they  give  them  silence,  but  they 
sing  to  them  and  lap  them  in  sweet  strains;  and  the  Bacchic 
women  are  cured  of  their  frenzy  in  the  same  manner  by  the 

use  of  the  dance  and  of  music .  The  affection  both  of 

the  Bacchantes  and  of  the  children  is  an  emotion  of  fear,  which 
springs  out  of  an  evil  habit  of  the  soul.  And  when  some  one 
applies  external  agitation  to  affections  of  this  sort,  the  motion 
coming  from  without  gets  the  better  of  the  terrible  and  violent 
internal  one,  and  produces  a  peace  and  calm  in  the  soul,  and 
quiets  the  restless  palpitation  of  the  heart,  which  is  a  thing 
much  to  be  desired,  sending  the  children  to  sleep,  and  making 
the  Bacchantes,  although  they  remain  awake,  to  dance  to  the 
pipe  with  the  help  of  the  gods  to  whom  they  offer  acceptable 
sacrifices,  and  producing  in  them  a  sound  mind,  which  takes  the 
place  of  their  frenzy.” 

The  Bacchic  women  of  whom  Plato  is  speak¬ 
ing  are  the  wine-maddened  maenads  who  follow 
the  god  Dionysus  in  his  wild  revels  of  dance  and 
song.  They  are  the  women  who  figure  in  The 
Bacchantes  of  Euripides,  and  indeed  we  may  re¬ 
gard  this  tragedy  as  the  dramatic  portrayal  of 
such  a  catharsis  as  Plato  has  in  mind.  We  should 
remember,  too,  that  Greek  tragedy  took  its 
origin  from  these  same  Dionysiac  revels,  com¬ 
ing  to  be,  in  its  artistic  realization,  a  kind  of 
vicarious  purgation  of  the  whole  city  from  the 
madnesses  with  which  the  spirit  of  the  god 
obsesses  men.  ‘‘Such  feelings  as  pity  and  fear 
and  enthusiasm/’  Aristotle  said,  in  the  passage 
from  the  Politics  which  I  have  given;  and  there 
is  significance  in  the  addition  of  just  this  word 
enthusiasm,  for  it  is  the  term  whereby  the  Greeks 
designated  the  idea  of  being  possessed  by  a 
spirit,  and  especially  by  the  spirit  of  the  god  of 
wine. 

Is  it  not  plain  that  the  catharsis  which  for  Aris- 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY  42i 

totle  is  the  proper  effect  of  tragedy  is  both  a 
purgation  and  a  purification — a  relief  from  dis¬ 
tempered  emotion  coupled  with  a  quiescent 
broadening  of  our  powers  of  sympathetic  under¬ 
standing?  Sympathy  is  at  once  a  gift  of  the 
emotions  and  of  the  imagination;  it  cannot  exist 
in  a  state  of  inner  and  personal  perturbation,  the 
state  that  Aristotle  calls  fear;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  cannot  exist  where  the  feelings  are  cold 
and  unmoved.  It  is  just  the  function  of  art,  and 
above  all  of  the  drama,  according  to  Aristotle, 
to  purge  or  relieve  us  of  the  personal  and  dis¬ 
turbing  element  of  emotion,  while  at  the  same 
time  it  stimulates  our  imagination  to  a  com¬ 
passionate  comprehension  of  the  suffering  na¬ 
tures  of  our  fellow  men,  and  so,  as  a  Greek 
might  put  it,  to  a  purified  insight  into  human 
life. 


V 

This  is  Aristotle’s  conception.  But  it  is  not 
yet  an  answer  to  Plato’s  challenge.  Let  me  re¬ 
vert  once  more  to  the  latter’s  criticism  of  poetry. 

“If  you  consider,”  says  Socrates,  “that  when  in  misfortune 
we  feel  a  natural  hunger  and  desire  to  relieve  our  sorrow  by 
weeping  and  lamentation,  and  that  this  feeling  which  is  kept 
under  control  by  our  own  calamities  is  satisfied  and  delighted 
by  the  poets ;  the  better  nature  in  each  of  us,  not  having  been 
sufficiently  trained  by  reason  or  habit,  allows  the  sympathetic 
element  to  break  loose  because  the  sorrow  is  another’s ;  and 
the  spectator  fancies  that  there  can  be  no  disgrace  to  himself 
in  praising  and  pitying  any  one  who  comes  telling  him  what  a 
good  man  he  is,  and  making  a  fuss  about  his  troubles ;  he 
thinks  that  the  pleasure  is  a  gain,  and  why  should  he  be  su¬ 
percilious  and  lose  this  and  the  poem  too?  Few  persons  ever 
reflect,  as  I  should  imagine,  that  from  the  evil  of  other  men 
something  of  evil  is  communicated  to  themselves.  And  so  the 

28 


Sympathy 
and  under¬ 
standing 


Plato’s 
criticism 
of  poetry — 
Republic, 
606 


422 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Debauched 

emotion 


Aristotle’s 

answer 


feeling  of  sorrow  which  has  gathered  strength  at  the  sight  of 
the  misfortunes  of  others  is  with  difficulty  repressed  in  our 

own.  .  .  .  And  does  not  the  same  hold  also  of  the  ridiculous? 
There  are  jests  which  you  would  be  ashamed  to  make  your¬ 
self,  and  yet  on  the  comic  stage,  or  indeed  in  private,  when 
you  hear  them,  you  are  greatly  amused  by  them,  and  are  not 
at  all  disgusted  at  their  unseemliness; — the  case  of  pity  is  re¬ 
peated .  And  the  same  may  be  said  of  lust  and  anger 

and  all  the  other  alTections,  of  desire  and  pain  and  pleasure, 
which  are  held  to  be  inseparable  from  every  action — in  all  of 
them  poetry  feeds  and  waters  the  passions  instead  of  drying 
them  up;  she  lets  them  rule,  although  they  ought  to  be  con¬ 
trolled,  if  mankind  are  ever  to  increase  in  happiness  and 
virtue.” 

Such  is  Plato’s  arraignment  of  poetic  art,  and  I 
think  that  no  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  kind 
of  emotional  debauch  which  is  so  often  confused 
with  the  true  appreciation  of  art,  can  doubt  the 
measure  in  which  Plato’s  strictures  are  just.  But 
is  there  a  function  of  art  to  which  they  do  not 
apply?  and  has  Aristotle  correctly  pointed  it? 

I  think  that  both  questions  can  be  answered  in 
the  affirmative,  and  I  think  that  Aristotle’s 
famous  phrase  indicates  both  answers.  At  the 
same  time  it  would  be  foolish  to  deny  that  this 
phrase  must  receive  a  large  interpretation. 
What  it  means  directly,  we  have  endeavored  to 
show;  but  what  it  signifies  in  a  general  scheme 
of  things,  in  a  whole  philosophy  of  life,  we  can 
only  infer  from  our  general  knowledge  of  Aris¬ 
totle’s  thought, — for  he  nowhere  explicitly  states 
his  case. 

That  philosophy  differs  from  Plato’s  in  an 
important  particular  which  we  have  already 
stated:  it  is  activistic,  where  Plato’s  is  purely 
ideal;  it  is  temporal,  and  we  might  almost  say 
temporalizing,  where  Plato’s  is  eternal,  and 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


423 


austerely  reserved.  Aristotle  accepts  an  imper¬ 
fect  world  of  nature  as  an  empirical  fact,  hoping 
for  its  redemption,  but  willing  to  take  it  for  what 
it  is;  Plato  sees  in  imperfection  only  the  ob¬ 
stinate  illusion  which  veils  from  us  the  truth 
that  should  be  ours.  Accordingly,  art  is  for 
Aristotle  a  legitimate  allegory  of  the  under¬ 
standing,  while  for  Plato  it  is  only  the  measure 
of  our  self-deception. 

There  is  another  and  more  personal  and  psy¬ 
chological  reason  for  the  difference  in  the  two 
philosophies.  It  is  obvious  to  any  reader  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle  that  Plato,  who  condemns 
art,  is  infinitely  more  moved  by  aesthetic  charm 
than  is  Aristotle,  who  justifies  it.  'Tf  her  de¬ 
fence  fails,”  says  Socrates,  and  we  know  that  it 
is  Plato  speaking  his  own  inmost  nature,  “then, 
like  other  persons  who  are  enamoured  of  some¬ 
thing,  but  put  a  restraint  upon  themselves  when 
they  think  their  desires  are  opposed  to  their  in¬ 
terests,  so  too  must  we  after  the  manner  of  lov¬ 
ers  give  her  up,  though  not  without  a  struggle.” 
Plato  and  Aristotle  both  were  true  Hellenes  in 
their  devotion  to  the  maxim:  “Nothing  in  ex¬ 
cess”;  self-control  was  with  each  of  them  the 
essence  of  virtue.  But  Plato  was  tempera¬ 
mentally  an  artist;  before  he  came  to  know 
Socrates,  he  was  a  poet,  and  the  music  of  poesy 
was  ever  ringing.  Siren-like,  in  his  ears.  That 
he  turned  from  her,  rigidly  and  ascetically,  is 
only  the  token  of  the  glamour  with  which  the 
figure  of  Socrates  had  seized  upon  his  mind;  for 
Socrates  was  the  last  of  men  to  yield  to  emotion, 
or  to  permit  the  mists  of  feeling  to  suffuse  his 


Key  to 
Plato’s 
austerity 


424 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


PhcBdo,  117 


Scientific 

calm 


Mimic 

passion 


vision  of  truth.  I  cannot  but  think  that  Plato’s 
absence  from  that  last  dialogue,  where  Apol- 
lodorus  was  rebuked  for  weeping,  was  due  to 
his  lack  of  confidence  in  his  own  powers  of  con¬ 
trol  and  his  shamed  fear  of  showing  weakness 
before  his  master.  Plato’s  asceticism  may  thus, 
throughout,  be  but  the  spiritual  self-protection 
of  a  nature  too  keenly  sensitive  to  the  charms 
and  beauties  of  that  sensible  world  which  the 
love  of  truth  had  taught  him  to  despise.  For 
Aristotle  there  was  necessary  no  such  inner 
handicap,  his  was  not  the  artist’s  temperament, 
but  the  scientist’s;  and  he  could  survey  with 
even  gaze  ugly  and  beautiful,  true  and  false,  ap¬ 
portioning  to  each  human  expression  its  proper 
human  role.  Thus,  in  his  philosophy  of  art,  he 
answers  Plato,  not  directly  by  a  refutation  which 
could  have  been  but  meaningless  to  the  Platonic 
temperament,  but  indirectly,  by  implication  from 
his  whole  philosophy  of  life;  for  with  Seneca  he 
would  say,  “To  me  naught  that  is  human  is 
alien,”  and  with  Pindar,  “The  things  of  mortals 
befit  mortality,”  and  of  the  heroic  past,  which 
was  the  main  theme  of  Attic  tragedy,  he  could 
say  with  Vergil’s  wanderer: 

sunt  lacrimas  rerum,  et  mentem  mortalia  tangunt. 

There  is  one  point  further.  Plato’s  criticism 
was  in  effect  that  art,  in  stirring  our  emotions, 
loosens  our  control  of  them,  that  moved  by  the 
mimic  passions  of  the  stage  we  stand  to  lose  our 
sense  of  proportion,  and  in  the  emotional 
exigencies  of  life  are  in  danger  of  weakly  yield¬ 
ing  to  feelings  which  we  should  rise  above.  The 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


425 


very  lesson  that  Hamlet  felt  the  stage  ought  to 
yield,  Plato  feared  it  -would  yield: 

“O !  what  a  rogue  and  peasant  slave  am  I : 

Is  it  not  monstrous  that  this  player  here, 

But  in  a  fiction,  in  a  dream  of  passion, 

Could  force  his  soul  so  to  his  own  conceit 
That  from  her  working  all  his  visage  wann’d, 

Tears  in  his  eyes,  distraction  in  ’s  aspect, 

A  broken  voice,  and  his  whole  function  suiting 
With  forms  to  his  conceit?  and  all  for  nothing  1 
For  Hecuba! 

What’s  Hecuba  to  him  or  he  to  Hecuba 

That  he  should  weep  for  her?  What  would  he  do 

Had  he  the  motive  and  the  cue  for  passion 

That  I  have?  He  would  drown  the  stage  with  tears, 

And  cleave  the  general  ear  with  horrid  speech, 

Make  mad  the  guilty  and  appal  the  free, 

Confound  the  ignorant,  and  amaze  indeed 
The  very  faculties  of  eyes  and  ears.” 

Plato  would  have  looked  with  abhorrence 
upon  such  an  outcome,  and  Hamlet  was  too 
Aristotelian  in  his  temperament  to  make  it  pos* 
sible, — for  want  of  reflection  is  not  his  besetting 
fault,  nor  emotional  madness  his  weakness.  As 
for  Aristotle  himself,  no  more  than  Shakespeare 
himself,  would  he  have  regarded  this  as  the 
proper  effect  of  tragedy.  Rather,  he  would  have 
said — and  we  may  aflirm  this  with  confidence — 
that  the  knowledge  of  life  which  comes  with  the 
tragic  catharsis  will  make  us  wiser  and  better- 
contained  and  more  capable  human  beings, 
quicker  to  respond  to  life  because  of  the  quicken¬ 
ing  of  our  sympathies  in  the  presence  of  the 
moving  spectacle.  ‘‘There  seems  to  be  in  us,” 
he  says,  “a  sort  of  affinity  to  harmonies  and 
rhythms,  which  makes  some  philosophers  say 
that  the  soul  is  a  harmony,  others,  that  she  pos- 


The 

player's 

fury 


Politics, 

1340b 


426 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Milton 


Blinded 

heroes 


sesses  harmony.”  Aristotle  would  not,  with  the 
Pythagoreans,  say  that  the  soul  is  a  harmony; 
but  he  would  agree  with  them  that  music  is  a 
proper  medicine  for  a  perturbed  and  cacophon¬ 
ous  spirit,  and  we  should  not,  as  some  critics 
seem  to  fear,  be  making  a  mere  moralist  of  him 
in  asserting  that  in  tragedy,  as  in  music,  he  be¬ 
held  an  agent  which  could  purify  and  ennoble  the 
harmonies  of  the  soul. 

I  believe  that  this  was  Milton’s  understanding 
of  Aristotle,  as  expressed  in  the  famous  introduc¬ 
tion  to  Samson  Agonistes: 

“Tragedy,  as  it  was  anciently  composed,  hath  been  ever  held 
the  gravest,  moralest,  and  most  profitable  of  all  other  poems : 
therefore  said  by  Aristotle  to  be  of  power  by  raising  pity  and 
fear,  or  terror,  to  purge  the  mind  of  those  and  such-like  pas¬ 
sions,  that  is  to  temper  and  reduce  them  to  just  measure  with 
a  kind  of  delight,  stirred  up  by  reading  or  seeing  those  passions 
well  imitated.  Nor  is  Nature  wanting  in  her  own  effects  to 
make  good  his  assertion :  for  so  in  physic  things  of  melancholic 
hue  and  quality  are  used  against  melancholy,  sour  against  sour, 
salt  to  remove  salt  humours.” 

The  suggestion  drawn  from  the  old  homoeo¬ 
pathic  medicine,  with  its  doctrine  of  like-cure¬ 
like,  we  may  pass  as  fanciful, — though  I  have  lit¬ 
tle  doubt  that  in  Milton’s  mind  it  bore  a  very 
special  significance  in  relation  to  the  theme  of 
the  blinded  hero  of  Israel  which  he,  the  blinded 
poet,  was  about  to  treat.  But  the  conception 
that  it  is  the  office  of  tragedy  to  reduce  the  pas¬ 
sions  to  just  measure,  and  so  to  assuage  the 
malease  of  a  troubled  and  disconsolate  life,  was 
the  Aristotelian  lesson  which  Milton,  more  than 
most  men,  was  in  a  position  to  learn. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  TRAGEDY 


427 


And  can  we  discover  a  nobler  image  of  the 
true  catharsis  than  is  Milton’s  own  poem? 

“Blind  among  enemies,  O  worse  than  chains, 

Dungeon,  or  beggary,  or  decrepit  age! 

Light,  the  prime  work  of  God  to  me  is  extinct, 

And  all  her  various  objects  of  delight 
Annull’d.  .  . 

Too  well  we  guess  these  words  from  Samson’s 
mouth  are  Milton’s  own,  as  again  we  see  Milton 
more  than  Samson  in  the  bitter  Puritan  con¬ 
science  that  refuses  forgiveness,  not  only  to  De- 
lila,  but  to  himself: 

“I  to  myself  was  false  ere  thou  to  me. 

Such  pardon  therefore  as  I  give  my  folly, 

Take  to  thy  wicked  deed.  .  . 

But  at  the  last,  when  the  action  is  done,  and  the 
little  deeds  of  earth  are  flitted  away,  the  spirit  is 
changed : 

“  no  time  for  lamentation  now. 

Nor  much  more  cause,  Samson  hath  quit  himself 
Like  Samson,  and  heroicly  hath  finished 
A  life  heroic.  .  . 

And  then  it  is,  in  the  final  chorus,  that  we  come 
upon  a  transfigured  Milton,  rising,  in  the  spaci¬ 
ousness  of  his  spiritual  insight,  to  a  perspective 
of  life  within  which  the  contentions  and  afflic¬ 
tions  and  harsh  bickerings  of  a  mortal  lot  are 
shrunken  and  meaningless, — ^just  as  the  moil  of 
troubled  waters  is  seen  as  a  passing  glamour 
from  the  serene  altitudes  of  sunny  hills: 

“All  is  best,  though  we  oft  doubt. 

What  th’  unsearchable  dispose 
Of  highest  wisdom  brings  about. 

And  ever  best  found  in  the  close. 

Oft  he  seems  to  hide  his  face. 


Samson 

Agonistes 


Trans¬ 

figuration 


428 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Wisdom 

through 

suffering 


But  unexpectedly  returns 

And  to  his  faithful  Champion  hath  in  place 

Bore  witness  gloriously;  whence  Gaza  mourns 

And  all  that  band  them  to  resist 

His  uncontrollable  intent; 

His  servants  he  with  new  acquist 
Of  true  experience  from  this  great  event 
With  peace  and  consolation  hath  dismist, 

And  calm  of  mind,  all  passion  spent.” 

Surely  this  passage — hauntingly  reminiscent 
of  the  great  ^schylean  hymn  to  Zeus,  ‘‘who 
hath  set  wisdom  in  suffering,  and  guideth  men’s 
feet  in  the  way  thereof,” — surely  it  brings  to  us 
the  final  image  of  the  accomplished  catharsis 
and  the  great  end  of  tragedy.  A  “new  acquist  of 
true  experience”  whence  should  fall  a  “calm  of 
mind,  all  passion  spent” :  can  Aristotle  have 
meant  other  than  this  by  that  chastening  of  the 
passions  which  he  makes  the  end  of  tragedy? 
Something  of  a  broader  understanding  of  life, 
something  of  the  divine  compassion  for  all  things 
human,  these,  and  the  stout  Hellenic  virtue  of  a 
self-control  that  can  proclaim  reason  king  even 
in  the  midst  of  bodily  distress, — these  are  the 
gifts  which  the  Greek  philosopher  and  the  Eng¬ 
lish  poet  alike  saw  to  be  the  great  gifts  of  true 
dramatic  art.  And  bearing  these  gifts  in  mind, 
and  judging  art  by  our  need  of  them,  can  we  re¬ 
quire  a  saner  or  fuller  justification  of  our  more 
worthy  tastes? 


XIII.  ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 

I 


HERE  is  a  well-known  painting,  represent- 


X  ing  the  kerchief  of  Saint  Veronica  imprinted 
with  the  countenance  of  the  crucified  Christ, 
which  the  artist  has  so  designed  as  to  create  a 
striking  illusion.  Apparently  the  eyes  of  the 
Christ  are  closed  in  death,  but  as  you  contemplate 
the  picture,  you  become  aware  that  they  are 
open,  gazing  with  a  grave  and  solicitous  penetra¬ 
tion  into  your  own.  There  is  nothing  sudden 
nor  startling  in  the  transformation;  it  is  no  spec¬ 
tacular  miracle;  but,  as  if  in  answer  to  your  med¬ 
itations  upon  the  aspect  of  death,  you  discover 
in  death’s  place  an  intent,  though  veiled  life;  and 
with  no  effort  of  the  imagination,  you  give  your¬ 
self  into  its  possession,  seeming  (without  dis¬ 
tortion  of  nature)  to  participate  in  a  transub- 
stantial  communion  of  spirit  with  spirit. 

To  me  this  picture  is  a  fine  symbol  of  the 
essential  truth  of  human  life.  We  open  our 
mortal  eyes  with  unpremeditating  curiosity;  our 
sight  is  caught  by  outlooks  flaming  with  lights 
and  colors,  or  fading  into  sombre  shadows, 
bright  with  the  hues  of  gaiety  or  dark  with 
tragedy;  and  even  as  we  gaze,  gradually  these 
varied  sensations  model  themselves  into  the  re¬ 
gal  features  of  Nature,  whose  veiled  regard  we 
responsively  meet,  striving  to  pierce  to  the  spirit 
behind  the  still  countenance.  As  by  grace,  as 


Saint 

Veronica’ 

kerchief 


Nature’s 

veiled 

regard 


429 


430 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


by  miracle ! — for  never  could  this  be  were  it  not 
that  we  are  endowed  from  birth  with  an  eye  of 
faith,  looking,  with  a  belief  ineffable  to  logic, 
for  some  revelation  within  the  flame  of  sense  of 
a  spirit  kindred  to  our  own — kindred,  even  if 
divine,  and  compassionate.  The  poignancy  of 
things  human,  and  all  that  makes  of  the  world 
a  riddle,  is  this  untaught  and  unswerving  faith 
that  the  configurations  given  us  by  the  senses 
are  real  only  as  symbols  inviting  our  eager  deter¬ 
mination  to  penetrate  to  their  meaning. 

The  thing  we  call  a  man  is  no  stark  material 
body,  nor  is  its  existence  but  a  drifting  phantas¬ 
magoria  of  pulsating  cells.  It  is  true  that  man, 
in  his  physical  being,  is  to  the  physicist  a  tran¬ 
sient  complexus  of  number  and  motion;  to  the 
physiologist,  an  amazingly  dramatic  interplay  of 
many-celled  communes — trade-guilds  of  the  bod¬ 
ily  commonwealth,  whose  adherences  to  their 
hereditary  crafts  is  health,  whose  rebellions  we 
term  disease;  and  that  to  the  psychologist  (if  he 
be  purist)  man  appears  as  a  cinematographic 
sweep  of  sensations,  full  of  flares  and  stops,  now 
dense  and  smooth,  now  breaking  into  fragmen¬ 
tary  incoherencies, — though  always  with  some 
tantalizing  relevancy  of  the  parts  never  quite  ob¬ 
scured.  But  to  the  metaphysician  a  man  is  some¬ 
thing  of  an  altogether  other  character.  In  his 
physical  being  he  is  an  encasement,  a  carapace,  a 
thing  of  cumbrous  plates,  narrowly  creviced  by 
the  organs  of  perception,  bunglingly  contrived  for 
the  amphibious  nymphhood  of  the  soul.  The 
real  man,  saith  the  metaphysician,  is  the  being 
encarapaced;  he  whose  purblind  senses,  like  the 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


431 


feverish  antennae  of  insects,  desperately  strive 
to  feel  out  the  essences  of  the  world;  or,  chang¬ 
ing  the  figure,  he  is  the  prisoner  in  the  donjon- 
keep  tantalized  by  the  shafts  of  light  piercing 
the  lancet-windows  far  above  and  awed  by  the 
thin  re-echoings  of  his  own  weak  voice;  or,  nobly, 
he  is  the  sage  drawing  the  coverlet  over  the 
closing  apertures  of  death-dimmed  eyes  and 
sending  as  his  thank-offering  to  the  god  of  heal¬ 
ing  the  sacrificial  cock,  brave  herald  of  the  morn. 
Man,  to  the  metaphysician,  is  essentially  an  ef¬ 
fort;  and  the  character  of  that  effort,  when  it  is 
truly  defined,  is  neither  for  enginry  of  rigid  nor 
artistry  in  phantasmal  matter,  but  ceaselessly 
and  intently  for  penetration  of  the  fleshly  screen 
of  reality  and  insight  into  its  heart. 

Wonderful  indeed  it  is,  that,  though  im¬ 
prisoned  from  birth,  the  soul  is  thus  conscious 
of  its  prison.  Stretching,  craning,  peering,  it 
strives  for  light,  and  still  more  light;  and  it  ex¬ 
pends  its  strength  and  its  ingenuity  in  the  en¬ 
deavor  to  create  and  refine  keener  instruments 
of  penetration  and  ever  more  powerful  glasses 
of  reflection.  Superb  among  all  these  instru¬ 
ments  are  language  and  reason;  for  the  whole 
refinement  of  experience  through  abstractive 
thought  and  the  whole  dazzling  mintage  of 
speech  rest  upon  a  confidence  in  values,  in  things 
not  grasped  but  meant,  as  if  the  whole  world 
were  bullioned  by  a  store  of  pure  gold  of  which 
our  minted  coins  are  true  certificates.  But  more 
than  this,  these  certificates,  like  coins,  are  com¬ 
municable  and  exchangeable  and  heritable.  For 
it  is  the  most  obdurate,  as  it  is  the  most  marvel- 


images 
of  man's 
estate 


Instruments 
of  com¬ 
munication 


432 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Walls  of 
flesh 


ous,  of  all  our  faiths,  that  the  redemption  values 
of  this  universe  are  social  and  ideal  and  sustained 
by  an  eternal  commerce  of  souls. 

For  though  physically  immured,  though  in¬ 
sulated  by  dense  matter,  the  spirit  of  man  is  by 
nature  gregarious,  possessed  of  an  insupportable 
longing  for  comradeship,  and  ever  pathetically 
struggling  to  perfect  its  obstructed  communica¬ 
tion  with  fellows  whose  presence  is  known  by 
faith  only.  All  that  we  mean  by  love — aye,  all 
that  we  understand  by  hate,  too, — is  inner 
measure  of  this  faith;  and  all  that  we  mean  and 
understand  by  reason  and  by  the  whole  gift  of 
speech  is  its  outward  burning.  We  mortals,  by 
the  flesh,  are  separated  from  one  another  as  by 
interplanetary  spaces;  but  we  surmise  the  un- 
jSeen  presences  of  kindred  spirits,  and  we  devise 
shrewd  apparatus  whereby,  charged  with  our 
mating  passion,  our  calls  are  imperiously  sent 
abroad,  while  in  the  ceaseless  perturbations  of 
the  sensitive  receiver  we  eagerly  puzzle  out  the 
half  coherent  responses.  Moreover,  and  most 
mysterious  of  all  the  attestations  of  our  yearning 
for  fellowship,  as  we  grow  in  body — wrestling 
like  Jacob  with  the  Angel  of  the  Lord — we 
metamorphose  the  body;  until  in  time,  the  physi¬ 
cal  form  and  countenance  themselves  become 
instruments  of  communion,  character  and  desire 
alike  written  in  their  lineaments;  so  that  of  all 
the  books  of  men,  none  are  so  subtly  symbolic  of 
the  soul  as  are  men’s  life-inscribed  and  life- 
prophetic  features.  Here,  indeed,  is  transub- 
stantiation,  and,  whether  by  holy  or  by  baleful 
light,  transfiguration. 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


433 


Life,  in  all  that  can  be  called  spiritual  and 
that  is  in  all  that  is  truly  life,  is  a  struggle  for  ex¬ 
pression  and  for  the  recognition  of  expression 
in  a  world  whose  one  high  virtue  is  fellowship. 
We  are  born,  under  stars  beyond  our  ken,  with  a 
faith,  for  which  reason  can  give  no  justification 
save  that  reason  itself  is  its  evidence,  in  the 
reality  and  rights  of  our  citizenship  in  a  cosmic 
democracy.  Being  so  born  does  not  give,  let  it 
be  understood,  assurance  of  participation  in  the 
citizen’s  benefits.  Engrossment  in  sense  means 
expatriation;  selfishness  is  suicide.  No  man  can 
be  a  true  philosopher  who  knows  only  the  closet; 
none  a  living  artist  who  is  immured  in  a  tower 
of  ivory;  nor  even  the  anchorite  human  and 
holy  save  God  is  with  him  in  his  cell.  But  all 
these,  and  all  men,  will  find  the  treasure  of  free¬ 
dom  and  the  boon  of  inspiration  only  in  reach¬ 
ing  out  beyond  self  and  sense,  only  as  they  are 
aspirants  for  participation  in  the  affairs  of  state, 
and  counsellors  of  the  high  res  puhlica  of  the 
world. 


II 

Mortal  men  are  imprisoned  men,  and  mortal 
life  is  a  struggle  for  liberation  through  fellow¬ 
ship.  This  is  the  metaphysical  truth  of  human 
nature,  as  saints  have  seen  and  philosophers 
have  portrayed  it;  and  if  we  study  human  ac¬ 
tivities  from  the  points  of  view  of  such  a  pre¬ 
supposition,  we  find  them  all,  in  their  various 
departments,  taking  on  the  form  of  language: 
all,  industry,  politics,  science,  art,  religion,  in 


Life  a 

struggle 

for 

expression 


Truth  of 

human 

nature 


434 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Art  an 

instrument 

of 

intercourse 


their  manifestations  appear  as  modes  of  com¬ 
munication,  by  which  men  express  their  impres¬ 
sions  of  the  nature  within  which  they  are  born 
and  shadow  forth  to  one  another  the  desires  and 
aspirations  which  this  nature  generates  within 
their  own  souls.  Life  is  a  struggle  for  liberation 
through  fellowship;  its  first  condition,  therefore, 
is  mutual  understanding;  of  which,  in  turn,  the 
prime  condition  is  a  language  which  can  convey 
the  subtleties  of  experience  from  mind  to  mind. 

The  arts  are  the  great  instruments  of  this 
intercourse;  and  art,  as  a  whole,  may  be  best 
defined  as  the  communication  of  imprisoned 
souls.  This  is  true  of  the  industrial  arts,  which 
express  our  practical  and  material  needs.  It  is 
true,  again,  of  the  communicant  edifices  of  re¬ 
ligion  and  science,  in  which  we  express  the 
valuations  in  terms  of  goodness  and  truth  which 
we  set  upon  the  world.  But  in  an  especial  sense 
it  is  true  of  the  fine  arts,  which  give  our  evalua¬ 
tions  in  terms  of  beauty;  for  it  is  these  arts 
which,  in  last  resort,  form,  as  it  were,  the  gram¬ 
mar  of  sense,  and,  by  reason  of  the  variety  of 
their  images  and  their  character  as  imitation, 
serve  to  symbolize  the  other  values.  The  prac¬ 
tical,  the  good,  and  the  true,  all  finally  receive 
their  communicable  values  from  the  fact  that  the 
mirrors  of  the  senses,  enlightened  through  art, 
may  set  upon  them  a  gloss  of  beauty  which  is  at 
the  core  of  all  desire  and  becomes  the  veritable 
gold  of  all  spiritual  commerce.  Plato,  with  a 
double  truth,  likened  the  artist  to  one  who 
holds  up  a  mirror  to  all  creation,  catching  therein 
the  fleeting  reflections  of  the  images  of  things 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


435 


ideal :  for  it  is  surely  the  imitative  art  which 
most  of  all  unfolds  to  us  the  phantasmic  char¬ 
acter  of  this  painted  world,  and  leads  us,  with 
more  supple  intelligence,  to  penetrate  to  those 
living  ideals  which  are  as  much  veiled  as  re¬ 
vealed  by  its  outer  figures. 

All  the  conscious  achievements  of  men’s  con¬ 
scious  desires  are,  in  a  true  meaning,  art.  But 
with  a  very  special  meaning  the  fine  arts  are  art 
par  excellence.  For  it  is  their  unique  office  to 
provide  that  final  appeal  by  means  of  which  the 
structures  of  industry  are  made  dramatic,  science 
is  shown  harmonious  and  whole,  religion  be¬ 
comes  communicant,  and  all  civilization  is  given 
its  panoramic  power.  More  than  this,  and  be¬ 
yond  all,  it  is  these  arts  that  limn  for  us  the 
pageant  of  nature,  portraying  what  in  sense 
transcends  sense  and  humanizing  the  super¬ 
humanity  of  all  things  remote.  Whether  it  be 
in  nature  or  in  human  nature,  if  we  see  structure, 
unity,  harmony,  it  is  with  the  aesthetic  eye,  and 
as  a  gift  of  that  power,  at  once  impersonal  and 
intimate,  which  through  the  arts  enables  us  to 
participate  in  all  creation. 

The  very  forms  of  the  several  arts  illustrate 
their  essential  purpose.  Vision,  hearing,  lan¬ 
guage — these  are  the  antennae  of  our  intelli¬ 
gence,  whereby  we  explore  the  flavors  and 
fibres  of  environment  and  establish  our  remote 
connections  with  kindred  pilgrims.  The  sense  of 
vision  is,  to  a  unique  degree,  the  mind’s  parable. 
Our  most  ordinary  speech  is  full  of  expressions 
which  show  our  intimate  dependence  upon  sight 
in  the  formation  of  ideas  and  judgments.  We 


Fine  Arts 


The  mind’s 
antennae 


436 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Vision 


Hearing 


Language 


ordinarily  think  of  the  higher  powers  of  the  mind 
as  being  supersensible,  and  indeed  they  are  so; 
but  for  the  communication  of  supersensible 
truths  it  is  upon  the  metaphors  of  physical  vision 
that  we  ultimately  rely.  The  ‘‘light  of  reason,” 
the  “light  of  faith,”  the  “eye  of  the  mind,” 
“spiritual  vision,” — these  are  phrases  so  common 
that  we  are  hardly  aware  of  their  metaphorical 
character.  Hardly  less  concealed  is  the  refer¬ 
ence  to  the  sense  of  sight  in  such  words  as  “in¬ 
sight,”  “intuition,”  “reflection,”  “speculation,” 
“imagination” — words  which  designate  the  sub¬ 
tlest  and  most  supersensuous  of  the  mind’s  pow¬ 
ers;  while  again,  for  that  inward  state  which 
marks  the  height  of  human  experience,  whether 
it  be  in  the  perception  of  Truth  or  of  Beauty  or 
of  Goodness,  we  have  but  the  one  word  “illumi¬ 
nation.”  In  a  related  fashion,  the  sense  of  hear¬ 
ing  furnishes  many  of  the  tropes  of  metempirical 
thought;  harmony  is  the  true  image  of  the  nec¬ 
essary  connection  of  ideas  and  of  logic  as  it  is 
the  natural  image  of  cosmic  order  and  the  sing¬ 
ing  spheres;  rhythm  makes  clear  to  us  the 
cycles  of  consciousness  as  it  does  the  cycles  of  all 
creation.  And  finally,  language,  the  “gift  of 
tongues,”  has  seemed  to  man  from  his  primitive 
beginnings  to  be  in  some  mode  oracular  and  di¬ 
vine,  while  supreme  among  all  the  tropes  of 
religious  philosophy  is  the  conception  of  the 
Logos,  the  “Word,”  as  the  participant  image  of 
the  spiritual  reality  of  the  universe. 

Thus,  in  their  natural  character,  vision  and 
hearing  and  language  have  a  double  relation¬ 
ship,  giving  them  the  native  quality  of  symbols. 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


437 


They  are,  therefore,  not  private  in  the  manner 
in  "which  touch  and  taste  and  smell  are  private. 
These  latter  senses  are  intimately  associated 
with  the  nutritive  functions  of  the  body,  and 
hardly  pass  beyond  such  functions  in  their 
significance ;  they  have  to  do  with  a  chemical 
rather  than  a  physical  world,  with  a  fluid  rather 
than  a  structure ;  and  they  are  all  conceivably 
a  possession  of  shell-enclosed  mollusks.  The 
sense  of  sight,  per  contra,  reaches  out  to  that 
which  limitlessly  transcends  the  body,  to  the 
fixed  stars  and  to  galaxies  beyond  the  galaxy, 
while  at  the  other  extreme  it  is  ineffective  if  the 
body  be  too  nearly  approached,  holding  its  ob¬ 
jects,  as  it  were,  at  arm’s  length.  Hearing,  again, 
is  the  sense  recipient,  and  is  isolated  as  no  other 
sense  is  isolated;  for  touch  and  sight,  like  taste 
and  smell,  commonly  test  and  corroborate  one 
another,  but  audition  has  no  such  natural  ally; 
for  which  reason  it  seems  abstract  and  ideal  and 
impersonal  in  a  degree  beyond  vision  itself. 
Lastly,  the  very  essence  of  language  is  commu¬ 
nication;  it  rests  upon  the  assumption  of  a  tran¬ 
scendental  world,  spirit  communing  with  spirit, 
out  of  all  dimension. 

It  is  these,  then, — vision  and  hearing  and  lan¬ 
guage — that  are  the  agents  of  our  liberation  from 
a  narrowly  bodily  life ;  and  it  is  wholly  to  be 
anticipated  that  through  these  should  come  our 
most  intimate,  because  our  least  selfish,  evalua¬ 
tions  of  life — what  is  called  the  impersonality  of 
art,  but  is  in  fact  only  its  unselfishness.  Con¬ 
sider  the  fine  arts  severally.  Plastic  and  pictorial 
art  is  but  expressive  vision.  The  painting  and 


Private 

senses 


Agents  of 
liberation 


29 


438 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Art  and 

inward 

nature 


Obj  ective 
emotion 


sculpture  and  formal  monuments  which  strew 
with  magnificence  the  pathway  of  civilization 
surely  represent  a  kind  of  imaginative  restora¬ 
tion  of  the  inner  reality  of  nature  as  men  have 
apprehended  it;  the  pillars  and  arches  of  the 
forest,  pyramidal  mountains  and  columnar  cliffs, 
have  given  the  image  of  a  world  architect,  as 
the  manifold  modellings  of  living  forms  and  the 
shining  fantasies  of  the  skies  have  given  the 
image  of  a  divine  sculptor  and  a  celestial  painter; 
and  it  is  through  interpretation  of  these  outer 
images,  projected  to  a  cosmic  scale,  that  men 
have  come  to  a  comprehension  of  their  own 
lordlier  selves :  the  image  of  Strife  touching 
earth  and  sky  is  the  measure,  says  Longinus, 
not  of  the  Titan,  but  of  Homer.  Our  modern 
art  of  painting,  rich  and  gorgeous  in  all  our 
galleries, — what  is  it,  if  it  be  not  the  varied  re¬ 
flection  of  the  spirit  of  an  age  in  which  man  has 
deemed  himself,  as  never  before,  to  possess  a 
friendly  mastership,  based  on  comprehension, 
over  a  world  of  nature  grown  dear  through  a 
new  intimacy?  Science,  in  our  day,  has  con¬ 
ducted  us  to  the  very  portals  of  nature’s  deep 
sanctuaries;  but  it  is  art,  and  above  all  the 
painter’s  art,  which  draws  the  last  veil  from  her 
face. 

The  other  arts,  for  other  fields  of  nature,  per¬ 
form  a  like  office.  It  is  perhaps  daring  to  speak 
of  an  emotional  life  of  the  world  as  an  objective 
fact  of  the  cosmic  reality;  yet  I  believe  it  to  be 
true  that  the  world  possesses  such  a  life,  whereof 
our  own  human  emotion  is  but  a  revealed  and 
shared  portion.  And  it  is  the  art  of  the  musician 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


439 


to  make  this  credible;  it  is  his  to  find  in  his 
own  emotions,  and  in  their  expression,  the  keys 
which  open  to  our  understanding  the  emotional 
changes  of  that  universe  in  the  midst  of  which 
we  come  into  being.  Certainly,  there  are  few 
problems  of  aesthetics  more  difficult  than  is  the 
analysis  of  the  attraction  of  music, — which  all  Music 
men  agree  to  be  emotional,  and  yet  in  some 
sense  impersonal.  This  is  a  paradox,  for  in  our 
psychological  descriptions  emotion  is  the  most 
purely  personal  of  all  psychic  facts.  But  the 
paradox  is  surely  resolved  if  we  assume,  as  I 
believe  we  must,  that  the  art  of  music  is  not  a 
mere  expression  of  private  feeling,  but  a  discov¬ 
ery  of  universal  feeling, — and  of  feeling  so  uni¬ 
versal  that  its  tones  and  chords  are  harmoni- 
sonant  far  beyond  the  range  of  merely  human 
experience.  To  this  degree,  at  least,  I  am  with 
the  Pythagoreans. 

Of  poetry  it  is  surely  not  necessary  to  speak  Poetry 
with  detail.  What  it  adds  to  logic  is  obvious  to 
all  men.  Plato,  had  he  judged  according  to  his 
own  practice,  would  have  said  that  it  is  the 
image  of  the  Good,  measured  by  Truth  and 
Beauty  and  Law;  and  we,  in  our  more  psy¬ 
chological  manner,  can  but  reiterate  that  it  is 
through  poetry — understood  in  the  broad,  as 
creative  literature, — that  we  express  that  life  of 
sentiment,  which  holds  a  middle  place  between 
ideas  and  emotions,  for  it  is  compact  of  both, 
and  thus  develops  the  whole  motive  of  human 
conduct  on  the  side  that  we  name  ideal.  Poetry 
participates  in  the  character  both  of  the  visual 
arts  and  the  musical,  uniting  impression  and  ex- 


440 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Art  a 
communion 


pression,  thus  in  its  essential  form  portraying 
the  subtle  give  and  take  of  all  higher  experience. 

Such  are  the  several  arts,  each  a  type  of  com¬ 
munication,  in  that  truest  sense  in  which  com¬ 
munication  is  participation.  In  their  forms  they 
are  diverse,  to  such  a  degree  that  it  has  been  a 
puzzle  to  aestheticians  to  say  what  they  have  in 
common,  what,  indeed,  is  art.  But  on  the  view 
which  I  have  expressed,  this  question  receives 
an  answer.  Art  is  the  communication  of  im¬ 
prisoned  souls;  but  it  is  that  form  of  communi¬ 
cation  which  is  communion.  Its  forms  are  due 
to  its  instruments — vision,  hearing,  language.  Its 
meanings  are  the  multiplex  tempers  of  human 
experience,  the  colors  of  all  life  caught  in  crystal 
and  disseminated  in  prismatic  play.  Its  under¬ 
standings  are  the  eagerness  of  our  sympathies, 
whetted  to  imaginative  penetration  because  of 
our  embodied  solitude.  And  its  aim  is  to  throw 
the  whole  world  into  its  true  psychical  perspec¬ 
tive,  drawn  from  the  vantage  of  human  nature, 
but  leading  out  to  ultra-human  horizons.  In  the 
interplay  of  expression  and  reception  it  creates, 
first,  an  ecclesia  of  man,  whose  image  stands 
idealized  on  the  high  altars;  and  second,  beyond 
this  that  broader  communion  of  man  and  his 
creative  world  which  is  materially  imaged  in 
human  states  and  societies  and  ideally  in  the  city 
of  God. 

Ill 

If  life,  in  its  humane  essence,  have  that  char¬ 
acter  which  I  have  ascribed  to  it,  of  being  a 
struggle  for  liberation  from  the  solitary  confine- 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


441 


ment  of  bodily  and  animal  nature  and  for  the 
formation  of  a  great  spiritual  republic  in  which 
men  shall  come  to  an  understanding  of  one  an¬ 
other  and  of  their  own  more  human  selves 
through  their  subtler  acquaintance  with  the 
world;  and  if  the  arts,  and  all  art  in  its  unity, 
serve  that  purpose  which  I  have  affirmed,  of 
catching  up  from  the  dross  flow  of  experience 
those  elements  which  can  symbolize  its  mutual 
values,  thus  establishing  that  intercourse  which 
alone  makes  humanity  conscious  of  its  quality 
and  alone  makes  its  republican  union  possible; — 
then  assuredly,  there  is  some  intimate  connec¬ 
tion  between  the  forms  of  political  states,  as  his¬ 
tory  has  shaped  them,  and  human  realization  of 
the  true  human  good.  Art,  if  it  be  the  key  to 
man’s  expression  of  his  humanity  and  the  instru¬ 
ment  of  its  appraisal,  can,  in  its  achievements, 
never  be  less  than  an  index  of  his  success  in  the 
battle  for  humanity;  and  its  association  with  this 
or  that  type  of  political  state  will  in  some  meas¬ 
ure  be  an  attestation  of  political  and  moral 
values. 

The  history  of  culture  furnishes  a  broad  illus¬ 
tration  of  this  connection  between  the  power  of 
art  and  the  spirit  of  humanity.  What  is  herit¬ 
able  in  civilization  is  chiefly  its  art — chiefly  its 
ideal  expression.  Political  power  is  notoriously 
evanescent;  economic  strength  is  only  less  so. 
But  whatever  of  dominion  and  riches  the  human 
spirit  attains  is  prized  in  its  own  day  and  pre¬ 
served  in  days  beyond,  forming  in  its  long 
assembling  the  hereditament  of  culture:  the 
broken  marbles  and  torn  papyri  of  the  past  are 


Art  and 
political 
states 


Heritable 

culture 


442 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Historical 

apogees 


Florists 
of  mind 


Democratic 


more  precious  than  all  the  pearls  and  purples  of 
kings  and  emperors. 

In  the  assignment  of  such  treasures  history  re¬ 
veals  a  simple  plan.  Art  rises  to  its  climaxes  of 
excellence  in  closest  association  'with  political 
and  religious  movements — 'with  those  periods 
and  forces  in  which  men  are  most  lifted  up  out 
of  the  narrow  and  animal  self  and  into  their 
humaner  ideal  self.  It  is  in  the  effort  to  express 
moral  conviction — using  the  word  moral  in  the 
wide  sense  in  which  it  expresses  all  conscious 
valuation  of  custom — that  art  arrives  at  its 
floruits.  Periclean  Athens,  Augustan  Rome, 
Florence  under  the  Medici,  Holland  under  the 
House  of  Orange,  Elizabethan  England,  the 
Erance  of  Louis  Ouatorze, — these  are  some  of 
the  great  periods,  in  each  case  be  it  observed, 
marked  by  or  following  a  struggle  for  internal 
order  or  for  external  independence.  ‘‘Liberty,” 
said  Milton,  and  he  uttered  no  finer  saying, — 
“liberty  is  the  nurse  of  all  great  wits.”  The 
florescences  of  mind  which  I  have  enumerated 
are  not  all  free  in  the  same  sense,  some  of  them 
hardly  free  at  all  in  our  political  sense  of  free¬ 
dom;  yet  all  of  them  are  at  least  periods  of 
conscious  national  independence,  and  of  inde¬ 
pendence  made  conscious  by  the  historical 
proximity  of  a  threatened  destruction  or  dis¬ 
ruption.  Furthermore,  two  of  these  periods 
represent  the  acknowledged  climaxes  of  Euro¬ 
pean  art.  Athens,  from  Marathon  to  Chseronea, 
from  the  birth  of  Socrates  to  the  death  of  Aris¬ 
totle,  and  Florence,  from  the  incursion  of 
Charles  of  Valois  to  that  of  Charles  VHI, 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY  443 

N 

from  the  exile  of  Dante  to  the  martyrdom  of 
Savonarola, — these  two  cities  not  only  produced 
poets  and  artists,  philosophers  and  saints,  that 
are  the  very  pattern  of  supremacy,  but  they  also 
discovered  and  defined  democratic  liberty.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  take  Rome  under  Augustus 
and  France  under  le  grand  monarque — which  of 
all  monarchical  periods  glitter  most  with  genius, 
— it  is  evident  at  once  that  the  thought  is  weaker 
and  the  expression  is  more  superficial,  nay,  arti¬ 
ficial,  than  in  the  great  eras  of  democracy.  In 
these  autocratic  periods,  representing  social  re¬ 
laxation  after  peril  and  dissension,  a  philosophy 
of  expression,  a  drama  of  manners,  satire,  orna¬ 
ment  in  art  and  life,  replace  the  severer  and  sin- 
cerer  striving  for  truth  which  marks  the  more 
troubled  politics  of  the  democracies.  To  put 

I 

the  matter  by  concrete  comparison,  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  the  critical  spirit  of  Aristotle’s 
Poetics  and  Dante’s  De  Eloquio  Vulgari,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  that  of  Horace’s  Ars  Poetica  and 
Boileau’s  UArt  poetique,  on  the  other,  is  not  that 
the  latter  are  not  concerned  about  truth  and 
beauty,  but  that  the  truth  and  beauty  which 
is  their  concern  is  infinitely  less  significant  and 
less  prophetic  than  is  the  austerer  thinking  of 
the  citizens  of  democracies, — and  this  where  the 
concern  is  primarily  one  of  formal  art.  In 
periods  of  great  political  achievement  men  be¬ 
come  highly  socialized,  that  is  to  say,  highly 
conscious  of  their  human  powers;  and  a  great 
art  is  the  natural  consequence  of  such  political 
greatness.  Yet  it  is  worthy  of  note  that  the 
highest  artistic  excellence  falls  to  the  demo- 


Imperial 


Aristotle, 

Dante, 

Horace, 

Boileau 


444 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Interna¬ 
tional 
religions 
and  art 


cratic  states, — partly,  we  must  suppose,  because 
of  their  more  generous  conception  of  liberty,  and 
partly  because  it  is  the  democratic  state  which 
attempts  the  most  complex  realization  of  our  so¬ 
cial  humanity. 

But  it  is  not  alone  political  humanity  that  is 
served  by  and  that  inspires  art.  In  the  growth 
of  civilization,  there  arises  early  that  sense  of 
solidarity  which  we  call  national  consciousness 
and  which  manifests  itself  in  that  communion  of 
ideals  which  is  the  essence  of  nationality.  But 
in  a  later  growth  nationalism  is  overpassed  by 
internationalism,  of  which  the  primary  and  to 
our  own  day  the  most  vital  forms  are  religious. 
The  world  owns  three  great  international  re¬ 
ligions — Buddhism,  Muslimism,  and  Christian¬ 
ity; — every  one  of  which  has  at  its  heart  the 
pulse  of  democracy,  and  is  in  a  true  sense  to  be 
described  as  a  communion.  Each  of  these  re¬ 
ligions  has  given  rise  to  a  great  symbolic  art. 
Indeed,  what  tithe  of  our  artistic  achievement 
would  be  left,  if  all  that  is  inspired  by  these  re¬ 
ligions  were  taken  from  us?  For  religion,  per¬ 
haps  because  its  meanings  are  subtler,  is  most 
of  all  dependent  upon  art  for  its  communication: 
the  religious  prophet, — Buddha,  Mohammed, 
Jesus, — speaks  in  parables,  and  the  altars  of 
temple,  mosque,  and  church  shine  with  double- 
meaning  tokens  and  the  images  of  compassion. 
Salvation  through  faith  is  the  great  dogma  of 
each  of  these  religions;  salvation  through  faith 
is  the  great  dogma,  also,  of  democracy,  and  in¬ 
deed  of  human  nature;  wherefore  it  is  small 
wonder  that  through  many  centuries  and  in 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


445 


many  lands  minaret  and  spire  have  lifted  up 
mute  signs  of  human  trust  in  a  universalized  hu¬ 
manity,  or  that  every  device  of  imaginative  ex¬ 
pression  should  have  been  brought  to  the  service 
of  so  moving  a  conviction. 

^‘Liberty  is  the  nurse  of  all  great  ’svits.”  De¬ 
mocracy — not  in  any  narrow  political  sense,  but 
in  that  sense  in  which  it  means  simply  men’s 
common  faith  in  the  manhood  of  men — is  the 
inspiration  of  art;  and  it  is  in  proportion  as  the 
conception  of  democracy  passes  outward  from 
the  political  and  onward  into  the  religious, — that 
is,  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  more  truly  spirit¬ 
ual,  and  more  a  communion,  that  art  gains  in 
breadth  and  vigor, — of  which  there  is  needed  no 
better  illustration  than  the  beauty  and  richness 
of  the  Gothic  art  of  the  Mediaeval  ecclesia.  In¬ 
deed,  what  religious  faith  adds  to  political  faith 
is  already  before  us  on  the  pages  of  history.  The 
political  state  is,  in  its  essence,  merely  moral. 
It  may  be  inspiring,  as  Athens,  for  a  brief  hour, 
was  inspiring;  but  in  the  end  it  is  not  truly  liv¬ 
ing,  and  the  impression  it  gives  is  architectural 
and  fixed.  Its  supreme  temple  is  a  temple  of 
Justice,  as  Plato  saw,  and  the  Romans,  with 
their  courts,  realized.  But  untempered  morality 
tends  always  to  simplicity  and  rigidity;  hence,  to 
unloveliness  and  to  the  loss  of  the  power  to  in¬ 
spire.  Plato,  with  the  moral  state  only  in  his 
eye,  would  banish  art  from  its  boundaries,  ex¬ 
cept  such  simpler  arts  as  might  minister  to  the 
determined  structure  of  the  state.  But  we — be¬ 
fore  we  can  give  allegiance — demand,  with  Adei- 
mantus,  that  justice  be  shown  to  be  the  fairest. 


Democracy 


Moral 

politics 


446 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Pagan 

and 

Christian 

virtues 


Law 

versus 

Art 


Human  nature,  when  it  fully  discovers  its  own 
needs,  is  complex  in  its  demands.  Justice  is 
beautiful,  and  the  virtues  of  the  just  state,  which 
is  the  political  state, — courage  and  temperance 
and  wisdom, — these  also  are  fair  and  shining 
when  beheld  in  their  untarnished  truth.  But 
there  are  other  virtues  springing  from  other  than 
political  communions, — the  Christian  virtues, 
which  are  the  virtues  of  a  consciously  imperfect, 
and  therefore  of  an  aspiring  world.  Justice  must 
be  tempered  with  mercy,  for  the  reason  that  men 
are  enfeebled  by  ignorance,  even  when  they  seek 
the  fair.  Faith  and  hope  and,  more  than  all, 
charity,  represent  something  beyond  a  political 
morality;  they  represent  modes  of  conduct  that 
can  never  be  expressed  in  laws,  for  the  reason 
that  they  can  never  be  abstract  and  certain,  but 
must  be,  always,  concrete  and  experimental, — in 
a  word,  aesthetic.  Life,  as  we  experience  it,  is 
temporal  and  experimental,  and  it  calls  for  tem¬ 
porizing  as  well  as  for  regulative  virtues.  This 
is  what  religion  adds  to  politics,  and  what,  in  its 
most  beautiful  form,  Christianity  adds;  for  it  is 
the  great  teaching  of  Christianity  that  adventure 
and  chivalry  are  truly  and  eternally  spiritual. 
Man  is  a  viator,  said  the  Mediaeval  doctors;  life 
is  a  pilgrim’s  progress;  the  hero  is  an  errant 
knight,  owing  an  allegiance  and  owning  a  faith. 

This  contrast,  Greek  and  Christian,  of  the 
virtues  of  the  political  and  of  the  religious  man, 
is  the  fundamental  one  of  an  abstract  and  merci¬ 
less  justice  versus  a  tempered  morality,  of  Law 
versus  Art.  We  feel  that  virtue  and  beauty 
should  invariably  agree,  but  in  our  experience 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


447 


they  often  seem  to  draw  in  contrary  directions; 
and  then  it  is  that  we  condemn  the  inspiration  of 
the  polity  as  insufficient  and  turn  to  religion  for 
something  more  profoundly  satisfying.  Tempta¬ 
tion,  it  would  appear,  is  a  part  of  the  order  of 
nature,  even  of  our  own  nature;  and  it  is  only 
religion  that  deals  fairly  with  temptation,  con¬ 
soling  it  with  charity.  Plato  had  glimpses  of  this 
truth,  when  he  turned  from  his  dialectic  to  his 
myths,  and  Aristotle  gave  it  his  own  characteris¬ 
tic  formulation.  ‘‘Poetry  is  a  higher  and  more 
philosophical  thing  than  history,”  he  says;  and 
it  is  so  for  the  reason  that  it  can  convey  the 
tempers  as  well  as  the  facts  of  life,  and  so  bring 
to  our  own  souls  the  purification  of  understand¬ 
ing;  and  the  tragic  hero  should  be  “a  good  man, 
suffering  through  frailty  or  error,”  because  life 
is  struggle  and  a  problem,  a  struggle  for  the 
good  and  a  problem  of  mutual  understanding, — 
not  merely  the  illustrative  solution  of  some  nat¬ 
ural  law. 


IV 

Let  me  return  upon  my  theme.  Life,  I  began 
by  saying, — human  life  is  in  its  essence  an  effort: 
the  effort  of  a  soul  imprisoned  in  its  own  natural 
realism  to  escape  into  what  is  no  less  its  own, 
even  though  never  selfishly  its  own,  humane 
idealism.  The  escape  is  never  effected,  the  real¬ 
ism  never  truly  evaded,  for  the  good  reason  that 
a  man  is  an  animal,  bound  by  animal  senses  and 
appetites.  On  the  other  hand,  the  idealism  is 
never  exhausted,  nor  can  it  be,  without  the  an¬ 
imal  losing  the  nature  of  man;  for  idealism  is  not 


Poetry 

and 

History 


Natural 

realism 

and 

humane 

idealism 


448 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Equivocacy 
of  art 


Nobility 


only  the  great  communion  of  humanity;  it  is 
itself  what  makes  man  humane.  To  put  the  mat¬ 
ter  in  Aristotelian  language,  the  iroXinKov 

which  is  man  gets  its  humanhood  from  what  is 
political  in  its  constitution — understanding  “po¬ 
litical”  in  its  broadest  and  most  spiritual  sig¬ 
nificance. 

It  is  this  humane  idealism,  striving  to  establish 
the  human  polity,  which  comes  to  expression 
(and  this  was  my  second  point)  in  the  forms  of 
art.  Art  is  the  ritual  of  the  communion,  and  the 
symbol  of  its  mystery.  Being  a  ritual  and  a  sym¬ 
bol,  art  is,  however,  necessarily  double-natured — 
participating  alike  in  sense  and  idea, — and  there¬ 
fore  in  no  small  degree  equivocal.  A  certain 
blindness  and  fumbling  is  inherent  in  all  sym¬ 
bolism,  which  art,  least  of  all,  escapes,  for  the 
very  reason  that  its  symbolisms  probe  so  far. 
The  expression  of  beauty  is  dissatisfying  be¬ 
cause  of  the  very  greatness  of  the  undertaking, 
and  indeed  the  noblest  of  such  undertakings  are 
the  least  complete. 

Nay,  what  is  nobility  if  it  be  not  a  recognition 
of  incompletion  ?  The  goods  that  men  recognize 
are  not  at  all  harmoniously  attainable;  in  the 
realization  of  some,  others  are  made  impossible; 
and  it  is  just  in  their  willingness  to  surrender 
what  is  privately  and  personally  dear  in  the  in¬ 
terests  of  what  is  publicly  important  and  spirit¬ 
ually  precious  that  men  are  endowed  with 
nobility.  Of  which  the  expression  is  that  life  of 
cities  and  states  and  of  great  religions,  whereof 
the  heritable  images  are  the  works  of  their 
artists.  Upon  this,  also,  I  have  touched,  indicat- 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


449 


ing  that  not  only  is  there  a  higher  virtue  in  the 
political  man  than  in  the  private,  and  in  the  re¬ 
ligious  man  than  in  the  political,  but  also  that 
the  office  of  the  artist  becomes  more  important 
and  significant  in  proportion  as  the  virtue  to  be 
communicated  becomes  more  subtle:  in  brief, 
that  the  symbol  of  Justice  is  at  once  more  simple 
and  less  moving  than  the  image  of  Faith,  and 
that  even  a  political  society  which  rests  on  faith, 
as  does  democracy,  makes  a  more  sensitive  use 
of  art  than  is  aught  that  but  ministers  to  the  glit¬ 
ter  of  autocracies. 

Such  has  been  my  argument.  From  its  state¬ 
ment  there  are  to  be  made,  I  think,  certain  clear 
deductions.  The  first  of  these  is  that  life  and 
art  are  complex  for  the  same  reason:  namely, 
that  in  both  there  is  a  mixture  of  the  real  and 
the  ideal,  a  contradiction  of  the  given  and  the 
intended.  Art,  we  are  told,  is  the  criticism  of 
life;  and  this  can  only  mean  that  art  is  our  most 
self-conscious  expression  of  human  nature. 
From  this  self-consciousness  it  gains  that  power 
of  communication  between  individuals  which,  in 
the  end,  amounts  to  a  mediation  between  man’s 
private  and  animal  and  his  public  and  spiritual 
desires — a  mediation  never  quite  successful,  for 
the  reason  that  the  two  can  never  be  wholly  in 
harmony. 

This  leads  to  my  second  deduction.  Art,  to  be 
true,  must  represent  the  problem  of  human 
frailty.  This  was  Aristotle’s  great  judgment, 
founded  upon  the  insights  of  the  Greek  trage¬ 
dians.  Goodness  and  beauty  do  not  actually 
coincide  in  human  experience;  justice  is  not  in- 


Mingling 
of  real 
and  ideal 


Human 

frailty 


450 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Faith 
and  fact 


Free 

choice 

makes 

morality 


evitably  the  fairest.  Our  faith  in  the  universe 
(for  we  have  a  faith  which  is  as  ineludible  as  is 
our  aspiration  after  humanity  and  of  which  this 
aspiration  is  the  expression) — our  faith  in  the 
universe  is  not  borne  out  by  the  facts  of  ex¬ 
perience,  at  least,  not  with  rigor  and  satisfying 
completeness.  We  men  are  embogged  in  evil  to 
such  a  degree  that  at  times  it  is  only  our  strug¬ 
gle  for  freedom  that  keeps  us  aware  that  we  are 
men.  This  is  the  fact  which  makes  tragedy,  and 
instils  in  us  that  fearful  sense  of  doom  which 
ever  impends  upon  the  throne  of  beauty.  Yet 
in  one  thing  we  may  take  heart.  Tragedy  was 
a  simpler  and  more  expressible  thing  for  the 
Greek  than  it  is  for  the  Christian;  for  to  the 
Greek  the  antagonism  of  goodness  and  beauty 
was  a  discrepancy  of  human  and  divine  law,  of 
the  political  with  the  religious  communion :  and 
this  the  Christian  has  solved  in  placing  the 
emancipating  above  the  regulative  virtues  and 
in  giving  to  faith  (of  which  charity  and  hope  ^re 
but  the  present  and  future  tenses)  the  last  re¬ 
prieve  to  salvation. 

Let  me  re-state  this  last  point,  for  it  is  im¬ 
portant.  It  is  not  command  and  obedience  but 
problem  and  free  choice  that  make  true  morality : 
the  parable  is  a  more  penetrating  lesson  than  the 
commandment.  Reason  calls  for  strict  justice; 
but  nature  tempers  all  stringencies  of  form, — in¬ 
cluding  that  of  justice,  including  those  of  rea¬ 
son.  For  reason  itself,  truly  understood,  is  but 
choosing;  vital  reason,  therefore,  and  the  only 
reason  worthy  devotion,  is  a  choosing  between 
balanced,  problematical  issues, — a  choice  in 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


451 


which  the  judgment  rendered  involves  some  loss 
of  ponderable  significance.  The  reasonable  life 
is  set  in  a  context  of  problem;  and  human  na¬ 
ture,  if  it  would  be  rational,  must  be  beset  with 
dubieties.  “They  are  not  skilled  considerers  of 
human  things,  who  imagine  to  remove  sin  by 
removing  the  matter  of  sin,”  says  Milton;  and 
it  is  equally  true  that  an  implacable  reason, 
drawn  to  no  error,  could  be  but  reason’s  whole 
denial,  mechanical  and  meaningless.  As  with 
reason,  so  with  justice  and  her  kindred  virtues: 
they  are  needed  only  in  the  face  of  trial  and 
peril;  they  are  significant  only  when  experi¬ 
mental;  they  are  beautiful  only  when  touched 
with  some  sacrifice.  It  is  faith  alone  that  can 
make  authentic  such  choices,  proclaiming  which 
is  the  lesser  and  which  the  greater  good, — faith 
alone  which  makes  the  final  purification  of  rea¬ 
son  a  love  of  truth,  the  final  purification  of  con¬ 
duct  a  love  of  the  good,  the  final  purification  of 
our  whole  ambiguous  life  a  love  of  beauty. 

Human  nature  rests  frankly,  and  for  its  very 
existence,  upon  the  number  and  importance  of 
its  problems.  It  is  moral  because  it  is  tempted; 
it  is  rational  because  it  is  puzzled;  it  is  gifted 
with  faith  in  the  unseen  because  it  is  helplessly 
absorbed  in  the  seen.  These  are  not  paradoxes, 
but  obvious  facts;  and  they  are  facts  which  have 
direct  bearing  both  upon  our  estimates  of  the 
values  of  our  forms  of  association,  political  and 
ecclesiastical,  and  also  upon  our  conception  of 
the  probabilities  for  the  expression  of  these 
values  in  the  arts.  If  we  base  our  judgment 
upon  history,  we  must  say  that  it  is  in  demo- 


Vital 

reason 


Paradoxes 

of 

human 

nature 


452 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Life  in 
democracies 


Political 

manhood 


cratically  organized  societies  that  science,  moral¬ 
ity,  and  art  have  come  to  their  finest  attainment. 
In  the  light  of  the  analysis  which  has  just  been 
made,  this  is  altogether  what  ought  to  be  antici¬ 
pated  of  the  future.  For  it  is  in  democracies 
that  the  problemic  nature  of  life  is  most  present 
and  most  recognized;  in  democracies  that  rea¬ 
son  is  most  alert,  and  solutions  are  least  near. 
In  the  autocratic  state  the  moral  rule  is  simple 
and  rigid,  and  art  is  but  its  witty  exposition.  But 
in  democratic  societies,  with  their  never-ending 
contests  of  wills  and  desires,  the  law  is  never 
stated  and  never  complete;  virtue  and  beauty 
never  wholly  coincide;  and  art  never  satisfies 
the  problem  of  their  reconciliation. 

It  is  this  very  failure  of  fulfillment  which 
makes  the  cultivation  of  the  arts,  and  in  par¬ 
ticular  of  the  fine  arts,  of  such  deep  concern  to 
democracies.  The  democratic  state — let  me  re¬ 
peat — is  the  state  above  all  others  which  recog¬ 
nizes  the  complexity  of  the  human  element  in 
human  nature :  political  manhood.  It  is  the 
democratic  state  which  gives  the  greatest  degree 
of  individual  responsibility  to  its  citizens,  and 
therefore  recognizes  the  variety  of  moral  inter¬ 
ests  and  the  importance  of  selective  reason.  It 
is  thus  the  democratic  state  which  encourages 
the  greatest  range  and  intensity  of  human  inter¬ 
course.  The  thing  we  call  freedom  of  speech 
we  justly  feel  is  a  primary  token  of  the  liberal 
state.  But  it  is  surely  in  place  to  point  out  that 
this  freedom  is  no  merely  individual  or  private 
privilege;  it  does  not  exist  as  the  consequence  of 
an  act  of  license,  and  it  does  not  signify  merely  a 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


453 


release  from  the  inhibitions  of  caution.  Rather, 
free  speech  gets  both  its  quality  and  its  value 
from  the  fact  of  a  certain  milieu  of  established 
intelligibility, — a  community  of  ideas  resting 
upon  community  of  experience  and  pointing  to 
a  community  of  purpose.  Free  speech  is  essen¬ 
tial  to  democracies  primarily  because  democratic 
citizens  are  one  another’s  judges  and  encour- 
agers  in  a  task  v^hich  is  being  created  by  a  com¬ 
mon  assent  even  v^hile  it  is  being  performed. 

And  all  arguments  which  can  be  urged  for 
free  speech  repeat  themselves  for  the  cultivation 
of  the  arts  in  democratical  societies.  The  arts 
are  but  forms  of  discourse  which  appeal  to  other 
than  our  verbal  intelligence.  Because  of  their 
power  to  give  emotional,  aesthetic,  moral,  re¬ 
ligious  values  to  ideas, — that  is,  to  convert  ideas 
into  sentiments,  and  hence  make  them  moving, 
— they  are  of  the  greatest  consequence  in  such 
a  pragmatic  society  as  democracy  must  ever  be. 
The  ecclesia  of  democracy  is  in  an  especial  de¬ 
gree  a  church  militant,  ever  contending  with  its 
own  imperfections,  and  thereby  ever  discovering 
the  unguessed  possibilities  of  human  insight.  In 
a  fair  sense  the  true  democracy  may  be  described 
as  a  congregation  of  artists.  The  citizens  are 
ever  reading  the  face  of  nature  and  giving  forth 
their  imitations  of  it,  in  the  intense  effort  to 
make  themselves  known  to  their  fellows;  and 
as  a  reward,  they  are  ever  deciphering  in  the 
countenances  and  deeds  of  their  fellow  men  the 
reflected  images  of  their  own  souls.  This  is  the 
public  life  of  the  state  in  its  best  realization  and 
most  perfect  office :  devoted  to  the  creation  of 


Free 

speech 


Art  of 
the  citizen 


30 


454 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Genuine 

democracy 

is 

spiritual 


that  communion  of  the  understanding  which  is 
the  holiest  of  all  sacraments,  since  in  delivering 
human  nature  from  its  baser  elements  in  the 
finer  it  reveals  man’s  portraiture  of  God. 

V 

At  the  outset  of  my  discussion  I  chose  the 
Christ  of  the  miraculous  kerchief  as  an  image  of 
human  life,  showing  by  a  symbol  that  duality  of 
regard  which  is  to  be  found  in  most  of  our  con¬ 
duct  and  in  all  of  our  reflection.  There  is  an 
escape — so  the  kerchief  seemed  to  say — from 
that  web  of  sense  and  passion  which  we  name  a 
body  into  the  serener  life  of  idealized  desires 
which  we  call  humanity  and  believe  to  represent 
our  worthier  selves.  But  this  humanity — as  the 
image  suggests — is  no  outward  physical  thing, 
nor  no  institutional  thing;  rather,  it  is  spiritual 
and  metaphysical,  and  it  is  of  the  nature  of  a 
great  communion,  open  to  all  men  who  by  in¬ 
spiration  or  effort  make  the  discovery  of  their 
own  profound  faith  in  it.  It  is  a  communion 
partly  conscious,  no  doubt,  in  all  the  states  and 
societies,  political  and  religious,  organized  by 
men, — perfectly  conscious  in  none  of  them.  But 
those  societies  in  which  it  is  most  conscious, 
and  therefore  truest,  are  democracies,  whether 
they  be  civil  or  ecclesiastical;  for  it  is  in  democ¬ 
racies  that  men  are  most  put  upon  their  mettle, 
as  individuals,  and  most  trusted  with  one  an¬ 
other’s  interests,  as  citizens.  Democracy  is, 
therefore,  in  a  special  degree  spiritual;  and  be¬ 
cause  spiritual  it  is  free.  For  those  who  under¬ 
stand  it,  its  ends  will  not  be  sought  in  material 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


455 


welfare,  nor  in  those  co-operative  efficiencies 
which  are  most  possible  when  ends  are  simple 
and  mechanical — as  warfare,  for  example,  is 
simple  and  mechanical.  Neither  will  they  be 
sought  in  institutional  pomp,  nor  in  monumental 
splendor,  nor  in  any  showy  surfeit  of  private  ap¬ 
petites  and  ambitions.  But  they  will  be  sought 
— where  alone  democracy  is  meaningful — in 
those  arts  which  most  show  men’s  loves  for  the 
impersonal,  and  which  most  lift  them  up  from 
the  material  self. 

Physical  forms,  on  such  an  understanding  of 
life,  are  valuable  in  proportion  as  they  express 
some  temper  of  metaphysical  things,  in  propor¬ 
tion  as  they  are  symbols  that  further  the  under¬ 
standing.  That  is  why  works  of  art,  and  espe¬ 
cially  of  those  fine  arts  whose  objects  have  no 
value  save  expression,  are  the  most  significant 
and  precious  of  all  works;  and  that  is  why,  out 
of  the  past,  we  painfully  piece  together  the 
broken  fragments  or  edit  the  torn  pages  that 
tell  what  men  once  loved.  But  more  than  this, 
even  the  bodies  of  men  are  moulded  by  our  hu¬ 
man  desire  for  communication  and  take  on  the 
forms  of  desire,  and  their  countenances  become 
imprinted  with  the  quality  and  genius  of  the 
state  in  which  they  live :  so  that  we  say  of  one 
human  face  that  it  is  that  of  a  democrat,  of  an¬ 
other  that  it  is  aristocratic,  of  another  that  it  is 
imperious — representing  institutions  engraved 
into  the  flesh. 

Portraits,  indeed,  are  the  most  convincing  of 
political  lessons.  As  I  turn  the  pages  of  Anton 
Hekler’s  striking  collection  of  Greek  and  Roman 


Physical 
forms  and 
metaphysi¬ 
cal  things 


456 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Greek 

and 

Roman 

portraits 


Portraits,  I  am  impressed  once  and  again  with 
the  fact  which  Plato  makes  the  heart  of  politics 
— that  the  character  of  the  citizen  images  the 
character  of  the  state.  The  Greeks  were  demo¬ 
crats,  not  by  right  of  the  perfection  of  their 
democracy,  but  by  the  right  of  its  discovery,  and 
the  fact  is  written  and  underscored  in  the  hu¬ 
manity  of  their  countenances.  Nor  is  this  char¬ 
acter  to  be  found  merely  in  the  features  of  the 
acknowledged  great — the  compassionate  Eu¬ 
ripides  of  the  Naples  Museum,  the  calm-eyed 
Pericles,  the  idealizations  of  the  beautiful  soul 
of  Socrates  transforming  a  grotesque  mask : 
these,  indeed,  are  such  images  as  only  a  people 
inspired  by  nobility  could  produce;  but  it  is  faces 
of  the  unknown  that  are  most  moving,  men 
and  women,  youths  and  elders,  all  touched  with 
a  beauty  that  is  never  serene,  for  it  is  the  beauty 
of  mortal  men  gifted  with  a  vision  of  things 
higher  than  mortal.  Turn,  then,  to  the  faces  of 
the  Romans.  Cicero’s  is  the  finest  of  them,  with 
a  bitter,  patrician  refinement, — far,  in  the  scale 
of  humanity,  from  the  grave  solicitude  of  the 
Vatican  Demosthenes.  But  the  emperors  — 
Claudius  as  Jupiter,Commodus  as  Hercules,  the 
theatrical  Nero  of  the  Uffizi, — even  Augustus, 
the  best  of  them,  what  is  he  as  compared  with 
the  images  of  Alexander?  While  as  for  the  un¬ 
known,  there  is  a  hard,  encrusted  brutality  that 
repeats  itself  through  a  seeming  impossibility  of 
variations.  There  are,  to  be  sure,  exceptions 
(astonishingly  few)  :  Romans  who  might  be 
Greeks,  Hellenistic  Greeks  who  might  be  Ro¬ 
mans.  But  in  the  main,  it  is  cold  formality  as 


i 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


457 


against  an  eager  and  wistful  beauty, — men  and 
women  alike. 

I  cannot  believe  that  this  difference  is  an  acci¬ 
dent  of  race.  Rather  it  is  a  product  of  ideals 
and  of  the  institutions  which  embody  them.  The 
Greeks  discovered  democracy,  and  although  they 
had  little  more  than  a  glimpse  of  a  promised 
land,  it  transformed  their  bodies  as  well  as  in¬ 
spired  their  art.  The  Romans,  early  yielding 
to  that  blindness  which  men  call  practical  sense, 
or  in  politics  the  politics  of  realities,  thereby  lost 
all  that  was  noblest  in  the  civilization  which  the 
Greeks  handed  on  to  them,  and  entered  upon  a 
course  whose  steady  degeneration  is  preserved 
to  our  view  in  their  portraits.  It  is,  of  course, 
difficult  to  pass  judgments  upon  one’s  contem¬ 
poraries  with  the  clarity  with  which  judgments 
upon  the  past  may  be  pronounced, — least  of  all 
when  the  matter  is  the  subtle  one  of  spiritual  ex¬ 
pression.  Yet  it  seems  to  me  certain  that  one 
who  is  sensitive  to  artistry  will  find  the  ancient 
contrast  repeated  in  the  modern  world,  and  for 
the  same  fundamental  cause.  What  nation 
among  us,  if  not  France,  is  the  leader  in  the  finer 
arts,  as  she  is  in  that  high  and  political  concep¬ 
tion  of  humanity  which  is  their  inspiration? 

I  have  yet  a  word  to  add.  For  in  emphasizing 
the  fact  that  man’s  spiritual  inheritance  is  his 
participation  in  the  great  commune  of  humanity, 
I  may  seem  to  have  denied  that  it  has  any  per¬ 
durable  meaning  for  the  individual.  This  is  far 
from  my  intention.  For  I  firmly  believe  that  just 
as  it  is  democracy  which  most  keenly  awakens 
the  individual  to  the  fullness  of  that  effort  which 


Ideals 

create 

expression 


Man’s 

humanity 


458 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

Platonic 

Man 


The 

pattern 

Athenian 


is  his  life,  so  I  believe  that  it  is  in  the  fulfillment 
of  democracy,  in  becoming  a  citizen  of  the  spirit¬ 
ual  commune,  that  the  individual  finds  himself 
most  truly  and  directly.  I  should  put  it  in  this 
fashion:  that  in  the  true  democracy  all  the  citi¬ 
zens  are,  as  it  were,  naturalized  through  their 
discovery  of  the  ideal  citizen — a  kind  of  Platonic 
man,  who  is  the  type  and  pattern  of  what  they 
most  value  in  human  character.  In  serving  this 
Platonic  man,  they  serve  the  best  that  is  in  their 
own  souls  and  the  best  that  is  in  one  another; 
while  from  a  converse  regard,  the  existence  of 
the  pattern  may  be  taken  as  the  highest  expres¬ 
sion  of  that  faith  of  man  in  man  which  is  the 
sanction  and  crown  of  all  democracy;  it  is 
through  the  image  of  perfection  that  men  are 
saved. 

Surely  it  was  such  an  ideal  that  inspired  the 
artists  of  Athens.  They  beheld  their  fellow  citi¬ 
zens  each  touched  with  the  spirit  of  Athena, 
each  ennobled  because  of  the  spark  of  the  god¬ 
dess, — and  with  no  loss  of  individuality,  but 
rather  with  their  individualities  eternally  en¬ 
hanced  because  of  their  membership  in  that  city. 
Not  ^schylus  nor  Pericles  nor  Socrates  nor  any 
other  was  the  ideal  Athenian,  though  each  par¬ 
ticipated  in  his  nature  and  each,  as  best  he  could, 
conformed  his  character  to  that  nature.  How 
richer  a  man  he  was  than  any  pattern  Roman! 
— richer,  because  more  a  man,  because  more 
humane,  as  democracy  is  more  humane  than  em¬ 
pire.  And  if  we  turn  to  that  democracy  which 
in  our  recorded  history  has  proven  so  vastly 
nobler  than  any  political  society, — if  we  turn  to 


ART  AND  DEMOCRACY 


459 


the  great  ecclesia  which  has  created  Christen¬ 
dom,  can  we  learn  any  other  lesson  than  that  the 
most  exalted  of  spiritual  missions  is  still  the  por¬ 
trayal  of  the  pattern  Man,  and  that  the  last  word 
of  human  wisdom  must  still  be  Ecce  Homo! 


Behold 
the  Man 


XIV.  HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE 
OF  PHILOSOPHY 

I 


A  world’s 
self¬ 
revelation 


WE  of  today  live  in  an  hour  preternatural. 

The  world  of  men  has  been  convulsed  in  a 
sudden  and  terrible  agony.  Fired  with  its  own 
passions  and  consumed  in  its  own  fevers  human 
nature  has'  suffered  such  a  revelation  of  its  own 
inward  constitution,  of  its  depths  and  its  heights, 
its  blacknesses  and  its  nobilities,  as  comes  to  the 
race  of  men  at  unforeseen  periods,  trying  them 
with  crucial  pains,  and  working  upon  them  like  a 
potent  medicine  for  their  elimination  or  their 
purification.  We  of  today  are  like  men  risen 
weakly  after  the  passing  of  a  delirium.  Our 
vision  is  still  dazzled  and  uncertain,  seeking  the 
new  light,  but  obscured  by  the  fugitive  shades; 
our  hearts  are  still  anxious,  quickening  with  ris¬ 
ing  hopes  or  sinking  heavily  back  into  dead  ob¬ 
sessions;  the  blood  of  our  life  and  the  breath  of 
our  life  are  still  tense  and  throbbing,  and  there 
is  a  ringing  of  voices,  out  of  the  past,  into  the 
future,  summoning  us  insistently  into  ways  that 
have  known  us  not.  The  hour  breaks  hugely 
upon  us,  and  we  stand  certain  of  our  sin,  uncer¬ 
tain  of  our  redemption,  as  naked  souls  before  a 
Judgment. 

There  was,  but  a  brief  time  past,  one  great 

460 


i 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  461 


and  blessed  ray  of  illumination.  When  the  last 
gun  seemed  fired  and  the  last  shell  seemed  burst 
and  peace  was  shouted  throughout  the  four 
quarters,  men  rose  up  with  a  cheer  and  sang  Joy  of 

pG3.CC 

paeans  to  the  new  day.  The  piaculum  had  been 
rendered,  the  offering  had  been  made,  and 
though  the  blood  of  the  sacrifice  was  still  un¬ 
dried  in  the  trenches,  men  felt  that  their  burden 
had  rolled  from  them  and  that  the  day  of  their 
salvation  was  at  hand.  But  not  so  easily,  not 
so  cleanly  do  we  clear  us  of  the  peril  of  our  souls. 

The  past,  histories  old  and  history  new,  sets  a 
living  seal  into  the  substance  of  all  flesh,  and  the 
wounds  heal  slowly  and  the  mark  is  for  all  time. 

In  the  whiteness  of  the  morning  we  shouted  with 
joy,  looking  to  the  East,  but  with  advancing  day 
we  turned  to  one  another’s  faces,  and  our  counte¬ 
nances  became  troubled.  The  gladness  has  faded  Aftermath 
away,  and  the  world,  inward  and  outward,  has 
grown  gray  and  turbid.  On  my  own  native 
prairies,  many  a  time  I  have  seen  a  glorious  and 
exultant  dawn  swallowed  up  by  swift-oncoming 
bands  of  ashen  cloud,  until  the  whole  heavens 
were  obscured  with  their  murk,  and  what  had 
promised  to  be  a  day  of  splendors  became  trans¬ 
formed  into  a  dimness  of  driving  rain  against 
which  the  journey  must  be  urged,  retarded  by 
muddied  roads,  doggedly,  tenaciously,  cheer¬ 
lessly,  certain  only  of  the  coming  night,  hopeful 
only  of  other  and  purer  suns  rising  to  other  days 
to  make  creation  fair.  Such  a  dawn,  brief  and 
symbolic,  we  have  beheld,  and  into  such  a  day 
we  are  entering,  conscious  that  our  lives  must 
be  the  lives  of  wayfarers,  that  the  expiation  has 


462 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  goal 
of 

civilization 


Dante, 

De  Mon- 
archia 


America’s 

place 


not  yet  been  fuliillecl,  and  that  the  great  radiance 
lies  beyond  us. 

The  men  and  women  of  all  races  and  nations 
are  struggling  onward,  less  strong  than  weak, 
less  seeing  than  blinded,  into  a  day  of  obscurity 
and  darkness.  We  of  the  United  States  are  of 
their  company.  It  was  the  great  Mediaeval  poet, 
speaking  as  such  a  statesman  as  perhaps  poets 
and  prophets  alone  come  to  be,  who  proclaimed : 
IThere  is  not  one  goal  for  this  civilization  and  one 
for  that,  but  for  the  civilization  of  all  mankind 
there  is  a  single  goal,  the  branch  and  flowering 
of  that  stock  whose  single  root  is  our  universal 
human  nature.  Seeing  ourselves  with  a  near 
and  flattering  eye,  it  is  our  wont  here  in  America, 
and  our  fatuity,  to  adjudge  ourselves  happier 
and  more  secure  of  happiness  than  are  other  peo¬ 
ples.  But  in  the  tale  of  the  centuries  and  the 
count  of  the  ages  we  shall  appear  yoked  to  our 
fellows,  as  mate  to  mate,  and  our  one  possible 
virtue  will  be  that  we  may  be  shown  to  have 
pulled  with  a  little  more  strength,  a  little  more 
steadiness,  in  that  toil  which  yields  us  our  bread, 
physical  and  spiritual.  There  is  a  goal  of  all 
civilization;  the  past  has  moved  toward  it;  the 
present  is  moving  toward  it;  it  is  in  the  pulse 
of  all  men;  it  is  in  the  respiration  and  the  aspira¬ 
tion  which  are  the  measures  of  all  human  life. 
We  of  America  can  neither  evade  nor  overpass 
this  goal;  nor  should  we  seek  so  to  do;  for  in  it, 
as  all  our  fellows,  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being.  The  future  of  mankind  is  our  future; 
for  we,  too,  are  men. 

There  is  a  single  goal  of  all  civilization.  This 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  463 

is  the  fundamental  upon  which  we  must  build 
our  conception  of  human  endeavor.  But  I  do 
not  understand,  and  I  do  not  believe  that  so 
great  a  thinker  as  Dante  could  have  understood, 
that  this  fundamental  truth  implies  that  the  prin¬ 
ciple  of  civilization  must  be  uniformity.  For 
the  realization  of  a  world  in  which  all  men  shall 
be  humane  it  is  assuredly  not  essential  that  all 
shall  speak  a  common  tongue,  or  recite  a  com¬ 
mon  creed,  or  that  all  shall  live  under  a  single 
government  or  under  like  forms  of  government, 
or  that  in  arts  or  manners  they  shall  follow  an 
unchanging  pattern.  The  unity  of  civilization  is 
not  to  be  sought  in  uniformity,  but  in  harmony — 
indeed,  in  the  richest  possible  harmony  which  is 
at  all  compatible  with  unity:  for  it  is  the  very 
trait  of  civilized  life  to  be  lifted  up  from  the 
monotony  of  savage  life,  to  become  complex, 
ramified  with  specialization,  varied  with  subtle 
dissonances,  accordant  through  the  instrumenta¬ 
tion  of  manifold  interdependences.  The  very 
word  civilization,  as  it  were,  summons  man  from 
the  simple  and  primitive  into  the  midst  of  the 
profusion,  the  labyrinthine  order  of  great  cities. 
It  is  there,  in  court  and  mart  multifarious  with 
life,  amid  centers  of  traffic  and  before  houses  of 
state,  where  all  is  chaotic  to  the  eye,  yet  all  is 
synchronized  as  by  a  single  clock  and  ordered  by 
an  accepted  law,  that  we  find  our  proper  image 
of  human  civilization  in  its  eventual  entirety; 
and  thinking  upon  this  image  we  realize  that  the 
citizen  of  the  future  must  in  some  fuller  sense 
than  we  have  understood  be  a  cosmopolite,  and 
that  the  world  of  men  must  become  a  cosmopolis. 


Uniformity 
not  its 
principle 


Its  image 


464 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Cosmo¬ 

politan 

harmony 


Analogy 
of  music 


Civilization  does  not  mean  uniformity;  it 
does  mean  harmony.  This,  be  it  understood, 
is  not  a  rejection  of  the  principle  of  limita¬ 
tion;  rather,  it  is  the  assertion  that  limitation  is 
essential  to  civilization.  The  possibilities  of  life 
are  not  infinite;  not  all  variations  are  profitable; 
not  all  differences  are  endurable.  There  are 
forms  of  government,  there  are  customs  of  op¬ 
pression,  there  are  darknesses  of  superstition 
known  to  the  past,  which  we  could  ill  afford 
again  to  endure,  and  which  assuredly  the  future 
shall  not  know.  There  are  races  of  men  who 
have  walked  their  unseeing  way  and  who  are 
gone  forever,  and  there  are  races  among  the  liv¬ 
ing  who  are  fated  to  a  like  oblivion.  If  these 
words  seem  cruel,  conceive  what  shall  be  those 
men  who  shall  live  in  a  period  of  the  future  as 
far  from  us  as  the  period  of  the  first  men  is  re¬ 
mote  from  us  in  the  past,  and  ask  these  men  of 
the  future  whom,  among  us  of  today,  they  will 
recognize  as  their  kindred?  A  feature,  a  trait, 
a  reverberation  of  thought,  a  dream — beyond 
these  we  shall  not  be  known.  The  process  of 
human  change  is  a  process  of  elimination  as  well 
as  of  accession,  of  limitation  as  well  as  of  varia¬ 
tion;  not  alone  of  growth,  but  also  of  purifica¬ 
tion. 

Permit  me  to  revert  to  an  illustration  which 
my  words  may  have  already  suggested.  Civiliza¬ 
tion  is  a  harmony.  Unity  is  its  fundamental;  its 
variety  is  composed  of  those  melodic  tones  that 
fall  within  the  law  which  this  fundamental 
establishes,  departing  from  it  but  to  return  to  it, 
enriching  through  accord,  enhancing  through 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  465 


contrast,  but  always  obedient  to  its  scale.  The 
art  of  music,  as  we  know  it,  conforms  to  prin¬ 
ciples  which  are  very  profound  in  nature  and  in 
human  nature,  and  true  with  a  lasting  truth. 

But  its  proper  materials  were  not  discovered  in 
a  day.  Out  of  infinite  noises,  shouts,  percus¬ 
sions,  twangs,  thrums,  the  notes  and  the  inter¬ 
vals  were  selected  and  refined,  and  the  orchestral 
keys  were  set  as  a  law  and  a  limitation.  Then 
alone  was  symphonic  unity  made  possible  and  Symphonic 
the  chant  of  choric  voices.  So  also  shall  be  our 
discovery  of  the  whole  art  of  living.  Deep  in 
our  natures  are  its  principles  and  its  tones  are 
sonant  in  our  lives;  but  in  the  past  they  have 
been  and  in  our  own  day  they  are  still  engrossed 
in  the  clamor  and  friction  and  blare  of  an  unpuri¬ 
fied  world.  In  some  fairer  future,  under  some 
happier  sun,  men  will  have  discovered  their 
gamut  and  their  law,  and  all  the  varied  notes  of , 
their  aspirations  will  swell  as  a  majestic  chant 
orchestrally  to  heaven.  For  us,  gropers  after 
art,  it  is  but  given  to  catch  from  the  noisy  air 
elusive  melodies,  prophetic  of  that  day.  Such,  I 
believe,  is  the  condition  today  throughout  the 
whole  world  of  men.  Everywhere  there  is  a 
challenge  ringing  in  the  ears,  carried  as  by 
^olian  winds,  and  everywhere  peoples  are  striv¬ 
ing  to  perfect  the  instruments  of  their  life,  to 
render  them,  if  may  be,  more  capable  of  the  sus¬ 
tained  harmonies  which  the  spirit  of  man  dreams 
even  if  his  hand  may  not  yet  execute  them.  Peo¬ 
ple  by  people  and  nation  by  nation  the  attune- 
ment  is  being  made,  and  while  there  are  raspings 
and  discords  not  a  few,  still  we  are  all,  we  men. 


466 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Our 

United 

States 


as  an  eager  audience  forgiving  the  jangle  of  pre¬ 
paration  in  our  anticipation  of  the  glory  of  the 
music. 

II 

And  as  is  the  whole  world,  so  in  a  special 
and  nearer  sense  the  United  States  is  in  the  med¬ 
ley  of  a  preparation.  Our  national  problem  is 
analogous  to  the  world  problem,  and  our  effort 
analogous  to  the  world  effort.  For  we,  in  our 
own  scale,  represent  a  dissonance  of  instru¬ 
ments,  an  inharmony  of  racial  and  social  groups 
which  have  yet  to  discover  the  law  of  their  ac¬ 
cord.  We  are  certainly,  one  and  all,  inspired  by 
the  same  great  theme  of  melodic  life,  by  an  ideal 
composition  which  shall  be  our  nationality  of 
the  future;  but  we  have  as  yet  not  mastered  or 
perchance  discovered  our  several  parts,  and 
some,  I  fear,  have  as  yet  not  perceived  the  rich¬ 
ness  and  variety  which  must  enter  in  to  make 
the  fullness  of  its  harmony.  For  the  moment 
there  are  many  who  strive  with  uncertain  hands, 
many  who  hear  only  their  own  notes,  many  who 
conceive  no  power  or  form  beyond  a  simple 
unison  or  the  repetition  of  accustomed  figures: 
they  are  honest  citizens,  they  are  stout  Ameri¬ 
cans,  but  they  have  yet  to  learn  that  the  magni¬ 
tude  of  the  anthem  of  the  future  will  come  from 
the  voices  of  a  multitude  of  choirs,  each  with  its 
part,  each  with  the  timbre  of  its  own  training 
and  tradition.  American  citizenship  of  the  fu¬ 
ture  must  be,  like  musicianship  of  the  highest 
order,  an  ability  to  bring  the  instrumentation  of 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  467 


many  races  and  many  peoples  into  one  master¬ 
ing  harmony. 

I  speak  of  the  future;  its  indications  are  in  the 
present;  and  they  will  be  seen,  I  think,  if  we 
but  throw  into  perspective  the  total  human 
economy  of  our  habitable  sphere,  as  history  has 
so  far  revealed  it.  It  is  but  four  hundred  years 
since  Magellan  circumnavigated  the  globe,  divid¬ 
ing  it  once  for  all  into  an  Eastern  and  a  Western 
Hemisphere,  an  Old  World  and  a  New.  In  the 
brief  intervening  centuries  every  land  has  been 
charted,  every  region  explored,  the  whole  of 
Earth  mapped  and  surveyed.  It  has  been  given 
to  us  here  to  live  in  the  day  of  the  climax  and 
completion  of  this  work,  for  it  is  in  our  day  the 
mysteries  of  the  two  Poles  have  been  uncovered 
and  the  mysteries  of  the  heavens  above  us  con¬ 
quered  by  the  craft  of  men.  Our  generation 
knows,  as  no  generation  before  us  ever  knew, 
the  full  human  possibilities  of  Earth,  our  de¬ 
mesne,  its  climes  and  its  tempers,  its  bounties 
and  its  limitations,  its  hospitalities  and  its  inhos¬ 
pitalities.  Dissolved  forevermore  are  the  im¬ 
aginings  and  hopes  and  illusions  which  for 
thousands  of  years  haunted  the  minds  of  civilized 
men  with  visions  of  Isles  of  the  Blessed,  of 
Ultima  Thules,  of  Lost  Continents,  of  Promised 
Lands  and  Lands  of  Refuge.  We  have  staked 
our  claims;  we  have  taken  our  titles;  we  have 
broken  the  furrows  of  our  boundaries;  the 
plumbline  is  set  in  the  midst  of  peoples.  What 
in  this  Earth  men  can  be,  we  know,  and  what 
they  cannot  be. 

And  in  this  broad  economy,  here  at  the  be- 


The 

charted 

sphere 


Staked 

claims 


468 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


A  prophet 


Eden 

restored 


ginning  of  the  twentieth  century,  what  of  the 
United  States?  what  is  the  role  of  our  North 
American  mountains  and  plains  and  vastly  wat¬ 
ered  fields?  As  I  consider  the  mapped  globe 
and  the  peopling  thereof,  my  own  mind  irre¬ 
sistibly  moves  backward  to  the  figure  of  a  vener¬ 
able  old  man  whom  years  ago  I  heard  lecturing 
upon  our  country’s  destiny.  He  was  not  a  man 
of  learning;  he  was  unschooled  and  plain;  but 
there  was  a  fire  of  zeal  in  his  eye,  and  his  long 
beard,  as  of  one  coming  out  of  the  wilderness, 
and  the  sudden  animations  of  his  theme,  gave 
to  him  the  aspect  of  a  veritable  prophet.  He 
unrolled  a  map  of  North  America,  and  pointing 
to  the  confluence  of  the  Mississippi,  Ohio  and 
Missouri  rivers,  expounded  his  apocalypse.  The 
rivers,  he  said,  are  surely  the  Rivers  of  Para¬ 
dise,  and  the  broad  plains,  extending  from  the 
Alleghanies  to  the  Rockies,  what  are  they  but 
Eden  itself — the  Eden  whence  man  had  been  ex¬ 
pelled  for  his  first  sin  and  to  which  he  should 
return  for  his  great  Millennium?  Behold,  he 
said,  their  great  figure,  set  like  a  divine  seal 
upon  the  continent,  for  in  their  form  they  sym¬ 
bolize  the  union  of  the  faiths  of  the  West  and 
of  the  East,  and  the  unity  of  the  peoples  of  the 
whole  world:  taken  together  the  three  rivers 
are,  as  it  were,  the  Cross  of  Christendom, 
whereas  the  Ohio  and  Missouri  forming  the 
arms  of  the  Cross,  form  also,  by  themselves,  an 
almost  perfect  Crescent,  the  Moon  of  the  Orient. 
Here  Europe  and  Asia  are  united  in  the  final 
realization  of  human  blessedness  upon  Earth. 

Fantastic  as  is  this  image,  it  nevertheless  con- 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  469 


veys  something  of  a  truth  which  every  American 
should  be  brought  to  perceive.  The  peopling  of 
this  New  World  land  is  from  all  the  continents 
of  the  Old.  Amid  race  after  race,  people  after 
people,  of  the  anciently  settled  lands,  men  have 
been  stirred  in  imagination  and  in  hope  by  the 
rumor  of  a  country  beyond  the  seas  which  should 
be  for  them  as  an  inheritance  to  be  entered  into, 
opened  in  a  new  spirit  of  liberty,  governed  by  a 
new  and  purer  justice,  gifted  with  a  deeper  and 
prouder  humanity.  And  race  after  race,  people 
after  people,  they  have  come,  until  the  plains 
of  America  are  as  a  place  of  assemblage  and  a 
gathering  together  of  the  nations. 

Each  of  these  peoples  has  come  with  its  own 
color  of  hope ;  each  with  its  own  promise  of  work. 
It  is  now  almost  precisely  three  centuries  since 
the  first-comers  of  my  own  race  found  out  the 
New  World  shores;  and  in  those  three  centuries, 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  in  the  beginning  alone,  later 
on  aided  by  other  peoples,  has  accomplished  a 
labor  whose  tradition  is  stalwart  and  proud.  For 
to  him  fell  the  pioneer’s  task  and  the  post  of 
honor  in  the  vast  work  of  opening  up  wilder¬ 
nesses  and  of  laying  the  foundations  of  cities  and 
of  states;  and  to  him  it  has  been  given  to  spread 
the  language  and  to  frame  the  fundamental  laws 
of  the  greatest  of  New  World  polities.  But  it 
has  not  been,  it  is  not,  and  it  cannot  be  his  alone, 
by  any  right  of  occupation  or  pre-emption,  to 
shape  and  limit  the  whole  content  of  the  life  of 
the  city  whose  foundations  he  has  laid.  The 
building  up  of  a  civilization,  let  me  repeat,  is 
complex  of  aptitudes  and  powers  drawn  from 


Gathering- 
place  of 
nations 


Anglo- 

Saxon 

pioneers 


31 


470 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  future 


Give-and- 

take 


many  races  and  from  many  traditions  of  culture. 
And  the  future  civilization  of  the  United  States, 
the  future  Americanism,  while  it  shall  surely  re¬ 
tain,  doubtless  as  its  prevailing  tone,  the  color 
of  Anglo-Saxon  institutions  as  here  acclimatized, 
must  and  should  be  enwrought  and  enriched 
with  the  manifold  gifts  which  the  genius  of  other 
peoples  have  brought  to  this  common  shore. 
Out  of  Europe  and  out  of  Asia  and  out  of  Africa 
they  have  come,  men  of  many  races  and  many 
complexions,  and  the  future  of  America  is  in 
their  hands. 

It  is  not  for  all  men  easily  to  understand  this 
truth;  it  is  not  for  all  readily  to  perceive  that 
there  must  be  give  as  well  as  take  in  the  intimate 
process  of  achieving  a  national  concord.  Many 
there  are  of  the  native-born  who  look  upon  the 
newcomers  as  welcome  only  in  so  far  as  they 
are  willing  to  forget  the  habits  of  their  fathers 
and  relinquish  the  customs  of  their  Old-World 
past;  and  some  there  are  of  those  newly  come 
who  have  failed  to  discern  that  the  life  here 
opening  is  a  new  life,  calling  for  the  abandon¬ 
ment  of  modes  and  manners  that  will  not  bear 
transplanting  without  becoming  tawdry  and 
meaningless.  But  time  is  a  potent  teacher;  and 
I  cannot  believe  that  any  man  who  will  seriously 
think  what  shall  be  the  Americanism  of  a  thou¬ 
sand  years  from  now  can  for  a  moment  doubt 
that  long  ere  then  the  discord  and  disorder 
which  at  present  beset  us  will  have  disappeared 
and  the  racial  and  cultural  antagonisms  of  this 
hour  will  have  been  brought  to  one  design, 
harmonious  through  all  its  contrasts.  The  in- 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  471 


vention  of  this  design  is  the  labor  of  our  present 
lives. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  world  problem  and  I 
have  spoken  of  the  American  problem,  which  is 
like  it  in  character,  but  lesser  in  scale  and  nearer 
to  our  lives.  I  would  now  speak,  with  a  special 
illustration,  of  the  mode  of  union  and  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  acculturation  of  peoples  within  peoples. 
We  come  here,  into  America,  like  a  procession 
of  householders  wending  its  way  with  gifts  of 
the  first  fruits,  each  race  and  people  with  an 
offering  unto  the  future.  How  shall  the  gifts 
be  received?  How  shall  the  festival  be  ordered? 
What  shall  be  the  price  and  what  the  blessing? 

When  I  consider,  apart  from  circumstance, 
what  should  be  the  most  perfect  example  of  a 
people  and  a  culture  which  have  shown  the 
power  of  give  and  take,  of  combination  and 
assimilation  without  loss  of  self-identity,  I  can 
give  but  one  unreserved  answer — the  Hebrew. 
Here,  in  the  accomplished  past,  we  have  the 
portrayal  of  such  qualities  as  are  demanded  for 
the  salvation  of  the  future;  here,  in  race  and  in 
idea,  we  have  the  illustration  of  such  powers  of 
union  as  are  demanded  of  all  the  races  of  Amer¬ 
ica  in  the  secure  founding  of  their  mutual  des¬ 
tiny.  Review  for  a  moment  the  astonishing 
history  of  Israel.  The  first  mention  of  the  na¬ 
tion  on  a  profane  monument  is  a  boast  of  their 
destruction  on  a  stela  of  the  Pharaoh  Merneptah, 
erected  about  1223  B.C. — '‘Israel  is  desolated; 
its  seed  is  destroyed.”  Doubtless  the  words 
commemorate  no  more  than  a  local  massacre 
or  the  defeat  of  a  band  of  pioneer  warriors  from 


Accultura¬ 

tion 


The  Hebrew 
an  example 


First 
mention 
of  Israel 


472 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Dramatic 

history 


Sargent’s 

murals 


among  the  Israelitic  tribes  already  hovering  near 
the  Promised  Land  from  beyond  the  Jordan  and 
abiding  only  the  waning  of  the  power  of  Egypt 
to  enter  into  its  possession.  But  viewed  in  the 
long  perspective  of  history,  it  is  surely  intensely 
dramatic  that  the  first  mention  of  the  most  im- 
perishing  of  peoples  should  be  the  vaunt  of  its 
total  destruction.  For  more  than  a  millennium 
after  the  time  of  Merneptah,  Israel  was  to  oc¬ 
cupy  the  land  in  which  he  first  had  encountered 
her,  her  brief  period  of  security  and  kingly  glory 
followed  by  centuries  of  terrible  national  anxiety 
under  the  constant  threat  of  the  great  and 
rapacious  empires  by  which  she  was  surrounded. 
Egypt  to  the  south,  Assyria  to  the  north,  Baby¬ 
lon  to  the  east,  Rome  to  the  west,  turn  by  turn 
they  wielded  the  rod  of  the  oppressor;  and  wars 
and  subjugations,  destructions  and  captivities 
tore  at  the  vitals  of  the  nation’s  life  until  she  was 
become  as  a  living  and  perpetual  sacrifice  among 
men, — 

....  the  great  Exemplar, 

She  that  was  ground  unremittingly 
Betwixt  the  upper  and  the  nether  mill, — 

In  dreadful  alternation  bent 
Beneath  the  supple  claws 
Of  the  lithe  Egyptian,  or  stricken  down 
By  the  muscled  bull,  Assyria, — 

Zion,  builded  on  an  hill! 

It  is  with  ever  undiminishing  admiration  that 
I  have  gone  time  after  time  to  the  Boston  Pub¬ 
lic  Library  to  contemplate  the  great  lunette — 
for  as  a  work  of  art  it  surely  is  of  the  great — 
with  which  Sargent  has  surmounted  his  superb 
frieze  of  the  Prophets  of  the  Old  Dispensation. 


i 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  473 


In  this  lunette,  as  it  seems  to  me,  he  has  con¬ 
centrated  the  essence  and  symbolized  the  endur¬ 
ing  meaning  of  the  history  of  the  cradle  of 
human  civilization,  the  ancient  Orient.  On  the 
one  side  he  portrays  the  Egyptian  Pharaoh, 
active,  powerful,  pitiless,  with  his  weighted  axe  Assyria 
uplifted  for  the  cleaving  blow,  advancing  before 
his  animal  gods,  and  all  the  tokens  of  Nilotic 
splendor;  on  the  other,  is  the  gorgeous  and 
heavy  and  cruel  Assyrian,  he  also  attended  by 
his  beast-gods  and  monster-gods,  and  he  also 
with  broad  blade  upraised  to  strike.  The  great¬ 
ness  of  the  material  world  is  in  these  two  figures, 
in  all  its  arrogance  and  ferocity,  in  all  its  ruth¬ 
less  and  fantastic  selfishness.  Between  them,  in 
the  image,  is  the  naked  and  suppliant  form  of  a 
Son  of  Israel,  surrounded  by  his  bowed  and  help¬ 
less  people,  uplifting  his  empty  hands  toward 
that  fire  of  the  wings  of  Cherubim  from  whence 
Jehovah  reaches  to  stay  with  his  touch  the  J^^ovah 
threatened  blows. 

I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  unto  the  hills,  from  whence  cometh 
my  help. 

My  help  cometh  from  the  Lord,  which  made  heaven  and 
earth. 

He  will  not  suffer  my  foot  to  be  moved:  he  that  keepeth 
thee  will  not  slumber. 

Behold,  he  that  keepeth  Israel  shall  neither  slumber  nor 
sleep. 

The  Lord  is  thy  keeper :  the  Lord  is  thy  shade  upon  thy 
right  hand. 

The  sun  shall  not  smite  thee  by  day,  nor  the  moon  by 
night. 

The  Lord  shall  preserve  thee  from  evil:  he  shall  preserve 
thy  soul. 

The  Lord  shall  preserve  thy  going  out  and  thy  coming  in 
from  this  time  forth,  and  even  for  evermore. 


474 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Jew 


Cosmo¬ 
politan,  yet 
individual 


Surely  this  psalm  was  in  the  artist’s  thought 
when  he  penciled  his  design,  memorable  with  the 
truth  of  ages.  Today  Egypt  is  no  more,  Assyria 
is  no  more,  Babylon  and  Rome  are  no  more,  but 
she  whom  they  deemed  to  have  broken,  Israel, 
is  still  a  miracle  of  life  among  the  nations. 

In  all  human  annals  I  know  of  nothing  com¬ 
parable  to  Jewish  history.  There  is  not  only 
the  great  fact  of  that  millennium  of  troubled  na¬ 
tional  existence  in  antiquity,  of  which  I  have 
just  spoken;  there  is  also  the  yet  more  remark¬ 
able  fact  of  two  millennia  of  a  not  less  afflicted 
dispersion  during  which  the  Jew  has  maintained 
his  race,  maintained  his  religion,  maintained  his 
peculiar  culture  in  the  midst  of  divers  and  far- 
separated  peoples.  He  has  done  this  in  the  face 
of  a  constant,  often  violent,  and  nearly  unani¬ 
mous  hostility;  and  he  has  done  it  in  a  manner  to 
command  the  respect  of  all  men.  He  has  done 
it,  moreover,  in  a  fashion  to  read  a  lesson  for 
the  future  of  mankind;  for  if  there  is  today  on 
earth  a  man  who  is  both  intensely  individual  and 
broadly  cosmopolite,  it  is  the  Jew.  He,  more 
than  any  other  man,  has  discovered  the  secret 
of  accommodation  to  the  usages  of  fellow  men 
without  imitation  of  them,  of  co-operation  with¬ 
out  identification,  of  harmonization  without  mere 
unison.  He  lives  in  Rome,  and  is  not  as  the  Ro¬ 
mans;  he  is  in  Asia,  in  Europe,  in  Africa,  and 
is  not  Asian  nor  European  nor  African,  but  is 
everywhere  a  kindred  apart,  related  to  all  men, 
but  confused  with  none, — such  a  man,  in  short, 
as  in  the  millennial  day  of  the  world’s  full  civi¬ 
lization  men  of  all  races  must  become. 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  475 

Such  is  the  spectacle,  the  miracle,  which  the 
Jew  presents  in  human  history.  And  where  is 
the  source  and  secret  of  this  amazing  vitality? 

To  seek  it  in  any  material  thing  were  to  make  vitality 
jest  with  reason.  The  jewelled  magnificence  of 
Solomon  was  but  a  passing  dream;  the  gold  and 
silver  vessels  of  the  ancient  temple  are  long-lost 
baubles.  In  olden  days  material  wealth  and 
power  lay  with  the  empires  of  the  river  valleys 
and  the  sovrans  of  the  seas — all  long  vanished 
away.  It  is  not  through  material  things  that 
men  preserve  their  lives,  and  no  lesson  of  this 
truth  is  more  vivid  than  the  lesson  of  Judah. 

Rather,  the  power  to  live  is  found  through  an 
inner  trust  and  an  inward  consecration  such  as 
all  Hebrew  history  attests.  Our  treasure  out  of 
antiquity  is  neither  in  corn  nor  gold  nor  public 
works,  but  in  the  records  of  human  experience 
and  the  reflections  of  human  conduct  as  art  and 
literature  portray  them.  Our  inheritance  out  of 
the  past,  as  our  heritage  unto  the  future,  is,  and 
can  only  be,  of  a  spiritual,  and  not  of  a  material 
substance. 

Did  any  people  apprehend  this  before  the  He-  jg^aers 
brew?  Has  any  held  to  it  with  a  more  tenacious  inheritance 
conviction?  Assuredly  it  is  present  in  the  leg¬ 
ends  of  the  covenants  with  the  patriarchs;  it 
is  in  the  farewell  exhortation  of  Joshua  and  in 
the  exordium  of  the  Books  of  Judges;  it  is  in 
the  hero  tales,  Moses,  David,  the  Maccabees; 
and  above  all  it  is  the  soul  and  inspiration  of 
the  books  of  the  Prophets.  “While  philosophy 
had  for  the  Jews  no  meaning,”  says  Professor 
Butcher,  “history  had  a  deeper  meaning  than  it 


476 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Sense  of 
history 


Imaginative 
frame 
of  life 


bore  to  any  other  people/'  And  he  adds:  ‘‘Nor 
was  the  history  of  their  past  merely  a  possession 
of  their  own;  it  was  a  treasure  they  held  in  trust 
for  the  human  race."  And  these  words  come 
very  near  to  the  quick  of  that  vitality  which 
has  made  Israel  unique  among  peoples.  From 
their  earliest  records  onward  the  Israelitic  fam¬ 
ilies  have  been  history-conscious;  they  have  felt 
the  breadth  and  endurance  of  human  destiny; 
they  have  perceived  that  the  movement  of  man’s 
life  is  not  one  of  simple  change,  but  a  movement 
with  dramatic  episodes  and  climaxes  and  with 
a  meaning  that  lives  behind  and  beyond  its 
scenic  shifts;  and  they  have  given,  to  all  the 
Western  world,  not  only  their  own  conviction  of 
the  reality  of  this  drama,  but  the  very  form  in 
which  they  themselves  have  cast  it.  From  the 
Greeks  we  of  the  West  derive  our  arts  and  our 
sciences,  our  politics  and  our  profane  letters; 
but  from  the  Hebrew  we  derive  the  whole 
imaginative  frame  within  which  human  life  is 
conceived  and  through  which  spiritual  truth  is 
made  vivid  and  moving.  Israel  has  been  gifted 
with  a  conception  not  only  vast  enough  to  pre¬ 
serve  them  living  throughout  the  centuries,  but 
in  its  strength  sufficient  to  command  and  en¬ 
gross  the  imagination  of  half  the  world  of  men. 
Nor  can  such  a  feat  be  due  to  any  other  acci¬ 
dent  than  truth  itself,  that  truth  of  human  na¬ 
ture  which,  whether  through  philosophy  or 
science,  art  or  religion,  comes  at  the  last  invari¬ 
ably  to  an  expression  in  which  the  world  of  fact 
resolves  into  an  apocalypse  and  the  foundations 
of  life  are  discovered  to  stand  in  its  prophecies. 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  477 


Here  we  have  before  us  a  truly  tremendous  il¬ 
lustration,  not  only  of  how  spiritual  forces  can 
act  to  preserve  a  nation  through  unparalleled 
trials,  but  even  more  of  how  the  thought  of  one 
people  may  become  the  life  of  many. 

Ill 

The  sense  of  the  significance  of  history,  of  the 
meaning  of  before  and  after  in  human  events,  of 
life  as  a  growth  with  a  fruition,  marks  the  body 
of  ancient  Hebrew  literature  with  a  singular 
unity,  like  the  stamp  of  a  single  seal;  it  touches 
the  sacred  writings  not  merely  as  the  atmos¬ 
phere  of  a  tradition,  but  as  the  genius  of  a  peo¬ 
ple  and  as  a  philosophy  of  the  world.  It  is  not 
extraordinary,  it  was  indeed  inevitable,  that  such 
a  conception,  recorded  in  the  thought  and,  as  it 
were,  expounded  in  the  dramatic  facts  of  Israel- 
itic  history,  should  have  laid  hold  profoundly 
upon  the  imaginations  of  the  peoples  who  have 
adopted  the  Hebrew  writings  as  in  part  their 
own  Dispensation.  The  course  of  Christian  civi¬ 
lization  is  deeply  guided  by  this  same  sense  of 
teleology,  this  same  demand  for  cosmic  drama 
as  the  background  of  life,  which  permeates  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  one 
other  conception  has  so  constantly  and  variously 
entered  into  the  formation  of  our  culture.  If 
anywhere  we  are  to  seek  for  the  manifestation 
of  acculturation,  it  is  here. 

One  need  not  go  beyond  our  American  his¬ 
tory  for  the  obvious  illustration.  Three  hundred 
years  ago  the  Pilgrim  colonists  of  Massachusetts 
were  contemplating  their  westward  voyage;  the 


Influence 
on  Chris¬ 
tianity 


Pilgrim 

Fathers 


478 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Bradford’s 

Journal 


Mormons 


Messages 
of  the 
Presidents 


range  of  their  ideas  would  have  been  utterly 
simple  had  they  not  possessed  one  inestimable 
record  of  human  experience,  the  Bible.  This 
book  formed  their  minds  and  dominated  their 
characters;  its  conceptions  were  their  concep¬ 
tions;  and  any  reader  of  Governor  Bradford’s 
moving  journal  will  perceive  at  once  that  the 
key  to  the  whole  enterprise  was  a  conviction  of 
the  sanctity  of  covenants  and  belief  in  a  Provi¬ 
dential  guidance  through  the  wilderness  into  a 
Promised  Land.  Not  less  striking  as  an  example, 
as  it  was  not  less  arduous  as  an  undertaking,  was 
the  migration  of  the  Mormons,  in  the  last  cen¬ 
tury,  into  the  deserts  of  the  West.  Here  again 
the  intellectual  and  moral  foundations  for  a  truly 
impressive  achievement  in  statecraft  were  in¬ 
spired  primarily  by  the  Old  Testament  writings; 
and  fantastic  as  some  phases  of  Mormonism  are, 
as  a  whole  the  movement  stands  forth  as  a  not¬ 
able  instance  of  the  capacity  of  men  to  be  moved 
to  great  hazards  and  high  action  by  the  ideals 
of  another  race  remote  in  land  and  time.  Nor 
is  it  only  such  religious  groups  as  the  Pilgrims 
and  the  Mormons  that  have  been  moved  by 
these  ideals.  Take  the  messages  of  the  Presi¬ 
dents  of  the  United  States,  especially  those 
which  have  been  composed  upon  occasions  of 
great  public  moment,  and  there  will  be  found 
throughout  them,  running  like  a  clear  course, 
this  same  simple  yet  austere  confidence  in  the 
justifications  of  history,  not  for  the  United  States 
alone,  but  for  the  United  States  as  a  participant 
and  a  maker  in  the  whole  movement  of  Earth’s 
nations. 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  MODE  OF  PHILOSOPHY  479 


I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  to  say  that  no  nation 
apart  from  the  influence  of  Hebrew  tradition 
has  felt,  or  would  feel,  the  significance  of  his¬ 
tory:  that  were  notably  false.  But  I  do  assert 
that  no  great  literature  is  so  penetrated  and  so 
toned  by  such  a  conception  as  is  the  Hebrew, 
and  I  also  say,  what  is  patent  truth,  that  it  is 
just  in  its  Hebraic  tone  that  this  conception  has 
been  assimilated  into  Occidental  civilization,  and 
I  think  in  an  especial  degree  into  democratic 
civilization.  It  is  a  commonplace  of  the  history 
of  our  culture  that  the  roots  of  what  are  highest 
in  it  are  two,  an  Hebraic  and  an  Hellenic.  From 
one  and  the  other  of  these  we  derive  most  of 
the  conceptions  by  which  we  order  our  lives.  In 
many  particulars  there  are  contrasts  between 
the  two  types  of  heritage,  but  there  are  also  not  a 
few  striking  parallels  and  in  certain  cases  at 
least  there  are  subtle  amalgamations  of  elements 
derived  from  each. 

I  have  in  mind  certain  ideas  that  move  very 
deeply  in  our  institutions  and  in  our  modes  of 
thought, — so  deeply  ^  that  they  may  indeed  be 
termed  forms  of  conduct.  The  idea  of  Law  is 
one  of  these;  and  the  idea  of  Justice,  which  is 
both  the  motive  and  the  measure  of  law;  and  a 
third  is  the  idea  of  Wisdom,  as  the  ordinator  of 
life;  and  a  fourth  is  the  idea  of  Providence. 
Each  of  these  ideas  is  pillar-like  in  the  edifice 
of  our  civilization,  and  all  of  them,  in  the  forms 
which  they  bear,  derive  from  both  the  Greek 
and  the  Hebrew  sources.  They  are  complex  as 
great  ideas  always  are,  and  in  a  particular  sense 
they  are  complex  of  their  double  origin,  through 


Hebrew 

literature 

and 

Western 

civilization 


Hebrew 

and 

Greek 


480 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


which,  if  they  are  to  be  understood  in  their  full 
bearing  on  our  lives,  it  is  most  instructive  that 
they  be  seen. 

Consider  the  first  of  these,  the  idea  of  Law. 
Both  peoples,  Greek  and  Hebrew,  were  in¬ 
tensely  conscious  of  this,  and  each  possessed  a 
variety  of  terms  by  which  to  characterize  it:  for 
the  Greek,  law  was  vo/xos,  a  thing  apportioned, 
0e(T[x6<;  or  OifiLs,  a  thing  established,  a  cus¬ 

tom-sanctioned  right,  or  it  was  a  decree 
or  enactment  of  the  people;  for  the  Hebrew,  it  was 
tor  ah,  a  direction,  mishpat,  a  judgment,  or  it  was 
a  testimony,  a  precept,  a  thing  engraven,  a  com¬ 
mandment.  Both  groups  of  expression  rest 
upon  similar  backgrounds  of  experience,  and  yet, 
even  in  the  nomenclatures,  there  is  always  some 
hint  of  the  cleft-like  divergence  of  the  final  con¬ 
ceptions.  For  the  Greek  thought  leans,  as  the 
terms  themselves  indicate,  toward  the  structural, 
the  constitutive  aspect  of  law;  hence  towards  its 
objective  source  and  measures.  ^‘All  human 
laws  are  fed  by  one  law,  the  law  divine,”  says 
Heraclitus,  “which  prevails  over  all,  and  suffices 
for  all,  and  surpasses  all”;  and  herein,  at  its  be¬ 
ginning,  he  expresses  the  spirit  of  that  Greek 
philosophy  whose  great  quest  was  the  discovery 
and  contemplation  of  the  laws  of  nature,  not 
that  man  might  dream  of  their  alteration  but 
that  he  might  compose  his  soul  in  conformit)! 
with  them.  The  Hebrew  conception,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  in  it  throughout  something  of 
that  sense  of  moral  peril — fear  lest  the  law  be 
broken,  fear  lest  nature  veer  man  from  recti¬ 
tude — which  is  symbolized  in  the  image  of 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHIC  MODE  481 


Moses  when  with  anger  he  waxed  hot  and  cast 
the  tables  out  of  his  hand  and  brake  them 
beneath  the  mount.  There  is  a  radical  difference 
between  law  as  the  formulation  of  custom,  ours 
or  nature’s,  and  law  as  the  instrument  and  ex¬ 
pression  of  a  good  to  which  men  but  precari¬ 
ously  hold;  and  it  is  this  difference  which  sepa¬ 
rates  the  Hellenic  and  the  Hebrew,  the  scientific 
and  the  moral  elements  in  our  own  conception 
of  the  ordering  of  life.  Nor  need  I  point  out  that 
priceless  as  is  the  ideal  of  form  and  structure 
which  the  Greeks  have  given  us,  it  could  be  but 
empty  and  monstrous  were  it  uncorrected  by  the 
not  less  priceless  insight  into  man’s  moral  re¬ 
sponsibility  which  is  the  rock  upon  which  He¬ 
brew  culture  is  built. 

The  conceptions  of  Justice  and  Wisdom  show 
the  same  type  of  divergence,  as  between  the  two 
peoples.  At  its  height,  in  Plato,  Justice  was  for 
the  Greek  a  harmony  of  the  virtues,  an  inward 
comportment,  almost  a  bearing,  an  attitude;  for 
the  Hebrew  it  was  an  emergence  from  trial,  a 
justification,  the  triumphant  righteousness  of  a 
man  passed  through  burnings,  like  the  three 
brethren  of  Daniel.  The  active,  the  dramatic 
element  is  felt  to  be  essential;  there  must  be  a 
moral  revelation;  there  must  be  an  agony  and 
a  theophany:  and  the  ancient  books  abound  in 
the  illustration  of  how  a  man  must  wrestle  with 
angels,  of  how  he  must  grind  the  mill  of  strang¬ 
ers,  of  how  he  must  be  proven  by  famine  and  by 
pest,  that  his  salvation  may  be  secure.  Similarly, 
of  Wisdom.  Aristotle,  with  his  meticulous 
classifications,  sets  in  series  art  science 


Justice 


482 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Wisdom 


Prometheus 
and  Job 


(iTTLdT^lxTj) ,  prudence  {<f>p6vrjm<i') ,  wisdom  (o-o</)ia), 
and  rational  intuition  (voi3?) :  and  with  Greek 
inevitability,  he  finds  essential  Wisdom  to  lie  in 
the  union  of  science  and  intuitive  reason  within 
a  sphere  which  is  in  fact  contemplative,  and  not 
active.  In  contrast  the  Hebrew  conception  of 
Wisdom — again  dramatic — is  a  combination  of 
practical  sagacity  and  of  wistful  faith.  The 
practical  sagacity  is  witnessed  in  the  wisdom  of 
Solomon,  in  his  traditional  judgments,  in  the 
proverbs  and  maxims  which  bear  his  name;  the 
faith,  at  times  rising  into  a  veritable  passion  for 
illumination,  is  source  of  most  that  makes  sub¬ 
lime  the  Books  of  the  Prophets  and  the  Psalms 
of  the  Temple  service. 

All  of  these  conceptions — Law,  Justice,  Wis¬ 
dom, — are  colored  by  the  fourth,  that  of  Provi¬ 
dence.  The  similarities  and  contrasts  of  Prometheus 
Bound  and  the  Book  of  Job  have  fascinated  many 
minds  and  have  been  many  times  expounded. 
Nevertheless,  I  do  not  think  the  subject  yet  ex¬ 
hausted;  and  in  particular  the  comparison  af¬ 
fords  an  enlightening  insight  into  the  essential 
bearings  of  the  idea  of  Providence.  The  name 
Prometheus,  like  the  word  Providence,  means 
foresight;  but  the  foresight  of  the  Titan  is  dis¬ 
tinctively  an  inactive  and  indeed  helpless  con¬ 
templation  of  the  inevitable  course  of  Nature. 
Prometheus  draws  a  proud,  if  bitter  consolation, 
from  his  apprehension  of  Ananke — Necessity, 
those  eternal  and  inevitable  laws  of  nature  from 
whose  operation  not  Zeus  himself  can  escape; 
his  sufferings  are  bearable,  not  because  he  looks 
forward  either  to  vengeance  or  vindication,  but 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHIC  MODE  483 


because  he  knows  that  in  the  roll  of  centuries 
injustice  shall  find  its  balance,  and  with  ageing 
Time  the  scales  weigh  even.  The  whole  tragedy 
impresses  one  as  if  it  were  but  an  enlargement 
of  that  strange  saying  accredited  to  Anaxi¬ 
mander,  “all  things  shall  make  reparation  to  one 
another  for  their  injustices,  according  to  the 
ordinances  of  Time.”  Contrast  with  Prome¬ 
theus,  Job.  Here  is  no  clear-sighted  knowledge 
of  Destiny.  Further,  at  the  last  as  at  the  first 
the  smitten  and  tried  patriarch  is  ignorant  of 
all  save  the  greatness  of  the  power  that  en¬ 
compasses  him — of  this,  and  of  the  great  fact, 
fundamental  for  him,  that  somehow  he  can  trust 
this  power.  Prometheus  is  silent  at  the  first, 
self-sufficient  throughout,  and  hopeless  every¬ 
where.  Job  is  silent  at  the  last,  self-sufficient 
nowhere,  and  never  utterly  despairing.  And  the 
reason  is  that  Prometheus  has  his  eyes  fixed 
upon  high  and  indifferent  fates;  Job,  with  the 
men  of  his  race,  can  conceive  of  no  allotment  un¬ 
accompanied  by  a  divine  solicitude.  Over 
against  the  saying  of  Anaximander  I  would  set 
that  of  Ecclesiastes  which,  if  I  interpret  it  aright, 
goes  to  the  heart  of  the  Hebrew  conception  of 
the  ways  of  Providence :  “He  hath  made  every¬ 
thing  beautiful  in  its  time:  also  he  hath  set  the 
world  in  their  heart,  so  that  no  man  can  find 
out  the  work  that  God  maketh  from  the  begin¬ 
ning  to  the  end.”  This  is  the  denial  of  all  Pro¬ 
methean  knowledge;  it  is  also  the  assertion  of 
the  great  article  of  faith,  that  all  things  become 
beautiful  in  their  season,  and  that  all  are  the 
handiwork  of  a  Maker  who  is  likewise  a  caretaker. 


Anaxi¬ 

mander 


Ecclesiastes 


4^4 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Hebraism 

activistic 


Laissez- 

faire 

Hellenism 


Is  it  not  evident,  in  all  that  I  have  shown,  that 
the  characteristic  color  in  all  of  these  ideas — 
fundamental  to  Greek,  fundamental  to  Hebrew, 
fundamental  to  Americans  of  today — is  given  to 
their  Hebraic  form  by  that  very  concern  for 
what  is  significant  in  history,  for  what  is  dra¬ 
matic  and  moving  in  human  life,  which  has 
seemed  to  us  the  core  of  the  Hebrew  genius? 
And  is  it  not  evident  again  that  these  concep¬ 
tions,  of  Law  and  Justice  and  Wisdom  and 
Providence,  with  which  are  interbound  the 
whole  group  of  conceptions  which  we  call  the 
hope  of  human  progress,  get  their  moving,  their 
activistic  as  distinct  from  their  contemplative 
values,  from  the  Hebraic  root?  If  so,  assuredly 
I  can  point  to  no  matter  in  which  we  of  the 
United  States  are  today  more  deeply  indebted, 
to  none  in  which  our  civic  inheritance  is  more 
essentially  seated,  than  to  this  very  activism  of 
our  political  ideals,  resting  upon  faith  that  the 
Providence  of  this  world  deals  fairly  with  us, 
leads  us  even  in  the  darkness  of  our  own  knowl¬ 
edge,  and  holds  us  to  the  conviction  that  Law 
and  Justice  and  Wisdom  are  to  be  passionately 
sought  and  maintained,  even  at  the  peril  of  our 
souls. 

Further,  I  have  this  to  assert.  In  the  United 
States  today  and  in  all  Western  civilization,  there 
is  a  terrible  tendency  of  the  educated  classes 
to  lapse  into  a  weak  Hellenism,  into  laissez- 
faire  in  the  moral  and  political  life,  evading 
responsibility,  abjuring  faith  in  any  essential 
righteousness.  Materialism,  cynicism,  a  vague 
and  sentimental  aestheticism,  socialism  without 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHIC  MODE  485 


heart,  rationalism  unwarmed,  these'are  the  com¬ 
moner  forms  of  the  disease.  For  disease  it  is, 
and  should  it  eat  to  the  center  of  our  national 
life,  it  would  surely  destroy  all  therein  that 
makes  us  worth  preserving.  As  yet,  I  believe, 
the  great  body  of  our  citizens  live  in  the  wisdom 
of  the  Jews,  not  of  the  Greeks;  and  that  they 
do  this  with  a  true  instinct  for  life  is  hugely 
lessoned  by  history  itself;  for  the  Hellenes  of 
old  are  long  passed  from  this  earth,  while  the 
Jews  still  live,  an  example  unto  all  men  of  the 
•  vital  power  of  ideals  to  preserve  a  people.  Nor 
from  the  America  of  today  nor  the  America  of 
the  future  can  we  afford,  for  an  instant,  to  re¬ 
linquish  that  gift  of  faith  which  we  owe  to  them 
— and  which  to  us  as  to  them  is  a  source  of  con¬ 
fidence  and  of  life. 

IV 

There  is  yet  a  final  gift  of  Hebrew  culture  of 
which  I  would  speak.  One  of  the  series  of  the 
Sargent  paintings  in  the  Boston  Public  Library, 
to  which  I  have  already  alluded,  is  entitled  “The 
Messianic  Era.”  In  artistic  spirit,  as  in  theme, 
it  is  utterly  different  from  the  grandiose  lunette 
which  depicts  the  afflictors  of  Israel :  in  place  of 
a  troubled  and  barbaric  pomp,  it  portrays  the 
serenity  of  hope,  and  the  whole  composition  is 
toned  by  an  atmosphere  of  grace  and  charm  and 
of  humane  delicacy.  On  either  side  the  doors  of 
the  future  are  being  drawn  by  obedient  wardens, 
while  between  them,  festooned  by  the  golden 
wealth  of  the  vine,  enters  the  Messiah,  exalted, 
leading  his  people  into  the  New  Eden.  The 


America’s 

choice 


Sargent’s 

Messianic 

Era 


32 


486 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The 

completed 

drama 


s. 


Zion 


wonderful  blue  of  the  background,  the  rich  golds 
of  the  vine,  give  a  color  that  is  splendid  without 
ostentation,  altogether  befitting  the  buoyant 
beauty  of  the  high  conception. 

This  picture,  to  my  eye,  is  the  appropriate 
complement  of  the  other,  not  only  in  artistic 
spirit,  but  in  the  range  and  reach  of  its  sug¬ 
gestion.  For  history,  which  recounts  the  past, 
is  never  truly  composed  unless  it  also  lives  on 
into  the  future ;  and  a  race  gifted  with  a  sense  of 
the  significance  of  the  past  must  be  thereby  a 
race  gifted  with  hope  of  the  eras  that  are  to 
come.  I  have  said  that  history  is  a  dramatic 
thing;  and  this  is  so  not  merely  because  our  his¬ 
torical  imaginations  inveterately  dramatize,  but 
because — as  the  story  of  Israel  itself  attests — 
the  facts  of  human  life  and  of  all  life  are  by  na¬ 
ture  dramatic;  nay,  if  I  may  play  upon  the 
sentence  which  Plutarch  ascribes  to  Plato,  be¬ 
cause  God  always  dramatizes !  It  is  not  geome¬ 
try,  it  is  epic  and  tragic  sublimity  that  at  the  last 
give  us  the  image  of  divine  thought.  This  Israel 
saw,  and  in  conception  it  completed  the  vast 
drama  which  begins  with  Eden  and  the  Fall  and 
moves  episodically  through  the  great  historical 
agonies,  by  a  final  vision,  a  theophany  clear  and 
luminous  in  the  engloried  morning  of  the  Mes¬ 
sianic  Era. 

All  peoples  have  their  idealisms,  and  many 
men  have  found  their  spiritual  inheritance  in  a 
lost  Paradise  or  a  Utopian  commonwealth;  yet 
of  them  all,  has  another  matched  Zion?  The 
vision  of  an  Anointed  King  returning  to  the 
Holy  Mount,  of  a  renewed  and  purified  Temple, 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHIC  MODE  487 


of  an  untroubled  possession  of  a  Land  of 
Promise,  and  of  an  empire  imposed  not  by  the 
sword  but  by  the  spirit  of  the  Law,  such  a  vision 
is  surely  no  mere  flush  of  the  fantasy;  rather  it 
springs  from  the  very  fountains  of  desire,  where 
human  desire  is  purest,  and  from  instincts  which 
are  more  in  the  nature  of  graces  and  intuitions 
than  of  helpless  dream.  It  is  through  such  vision 
that  we  declare  our  shortcomings  and  set  our 
measures,  and  it  is  in  emulation  of  such  vision 
that  we  uprear  the  pillars  of  our  nobler  human¬ 
ity.  Man,  even  in  the  moment  of  his  apocalypse, 
stands  with  feet  to  earth,  but  his  eyes  are  on  the 
stars. 

Zionism,  as  the  Messianic  Hope,  as  an  ever-  Zionism 
lasting  inspiration,  seems  to  me  most  beautiful,  fnd^ideal^ 
the  true  splendor  of  the  crown  of  Judah.  Of  its 
other,  more  practical,  phase,  as  a  re-settlement 
of  the  ancient  domain,  I  do  not  conceive  myself 
qualified  to  speak  more  than  tentatively.  I  can 
see  that  for  Jews  in  lands  where  Jews  still  eat 
their  bread  in  bitterness  a  new  Palestinian  Zion 
may  come  as  a  bright  redemption;  and  I  can 
understand  that  this  reason  alone  might  fully 
justify  the  material  effort.  But  for  the  spiritual 
gift,  and  the  true  greatness  of  Judaism,  I  do  not 
conceive  that  the  physical  restoration  can  be 
helpful.  Long  since  Judaism  has  outpassed  the 
confines  of  a  narrow  geography,  as  long  since, 
even  in  the  days  of  the  later  prophets,  it  had 
outpassed  the  narrower  confines  of  race.  It  has 
become  a  force  of  the  human  spirit,  and  therein 
it  has  entered  into  the  realm  of  things  intem¬ 
poral.  Here  in  America  we  desperately  need  the 


488 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


America's 

need 


fervor  of  the  idealism  of  every  race  and  group 
that  takes  up  our  citizenship;  and  as  an  Ameri¬ 
can  I  could  not  but  feel  dimly  envious  of  any 
other  of  earth’s  lands  which  should  draw  hence 
the  spiritual  allegiance  of  my  fellow  citizens; 
but  of  that  Zion  which  should  be  open  to  all 
men  and  should  be  the  illumination  of  all  states, 
no  man  need  be  envious.  Plato  was  wiser  than 
his  own  Hellenism  when  he  made  Socrates  say 
of  the  ideal  city:  “In  heaven  there  is  laid  up  a 
pattern  of  it,  methinks;  which  he  who  desires 
may  behold,  and  beholding,  may  set  his  own 
house  in  order;  but  whether  such  a  one  exists, 
or  ever  will  exist  in  fact,  is  no  matter;  for  he 
will  live  after  the  manner  of  that  city,  having 
nothing  to  do  with  any  other.”  In  the  end  the 
greatness  of  all  human  vision,  like  the  completed 
significance  of  history,  is  to  be  sought  and  found 
“under  the  form  of  eternity.” 

I  have  here  used  the  famous  phrase  of  a  Jew 
who,  disowned  in  his  own  day,  is  proudly 
recognized  today  both  for  beauty  of  character 
and  power  of  intelligence  by  both  Jew  and 
Christian.  Spinoza,  simply  human  in  his  life  as 
citizen,  was  in  soul  nobly  detached  from  the 
morass  of  false  conceit  into  which  engrossed 
men  pitifully  fall.  He  beheld  life  with  a  great, 
white  sanity;  and  loving  freedom  with  the  pas¬ 
sion  of  one  who  could  perceive  the  full  degrada¬ 
tion  of  enslavement,  he  pointed  the  way  to  it, 
through  the  quiet  of  the  intelligence,  into  the 
realm  of  ideas,  under  the  form  of  eternity.  Like 
a  Messiah  he  opened  the  gates  to  the  ample 
serenity  of  the  morning,  and  he  made  himself 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHIC  MODE  489 


king  in  a  transcendent  kingdom.  Spinoza  was 
no  Jew  in  the  olden  tradition;  he  was  no  Chris¬ 
tian;  but  he  was  a  noble  and  a  great  citizen  of 
the  modern  world,  bearing  thereto  a  treasure 
which  it  was  his  to  discover  because  he  had  been 
a  Jew  and  had  shared  in  the  inheritance  of  Israel. 

And  therein  he  figured  what  the  Jew  might 
mean,  as  a  man  of  his  kind  among  mankind. 

I  would  make  one  last  comparison,  and  beside 
Spinoza  I  would  set  the  figure  of  that  great 
Englishman,  his  contemporary,  who  was  also  a 
lover  of  freedom,  and  who,  after  a  high  participa¬ 
tion  in  the  activities  of  the  state,  spent  his  great¬ 
est  years  in  austere  seclusion.  John  Milton  was  John  Milton 
splendid  as  an  English  citizen;  he  was  more 
splendid  as  an  English  poet,  and  as  a  poet  he 
was  more  than  of  his  nation.  There  is  no  other 
writer  of  Christendom  whose  imagination  is  so 
shot  through  with  the  sublimities  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  as  is  Milton’s,  and  none  other  who 
may  so  truly  be  described  as  a  spiritual  son  of 
Israel.  Not  only  in  Paradise  Lost,  with  its  vastly 
cosmic  drama,  but  also  in  the  gravely  noble 
Samson  Agonistes,  Milton  moves  in  thought  with 
the  Hebrew  poets  and  prophets,  and  as  one  of 
their  number.  Like  Spinoza  he  sought  spiritual 
freedom;  like  Spinoza  he  beheld  it  under  the 
form  of  eternity;  but  the  manner  of  his  expres¬ 
sion  is  more  apocalyptic,  more  Jewish  than  is 
Spinoza’s, — as  if,  in  a  division  of  inheritance, 
these  two  men  of  genius,  Jew  and  Christian,  had 
each  come  to  mastery  of  the  other’s  speech. 

Is  it  not  through  such  spiritual  transmissions 
that  we  men  shall  come  at  last  into  the  reality  of 


490 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  final 
Zion 


Philosophy 
and  the 
Jews 


our  Messianic  hope?  Into  that  final  Zion  whose 
temple  precincts  shall  be  the  habitable  globe, 
its  courts  Earth’s  nations,  and  its  choirs  the  an¬ 
tiphonies  of  languages  not  uttered  as  shibboleths 
but  as  the  diapason  of  all  fine  ideals?  Whether 
such  an  one  will  ever  exist  in  fact  is  no  matter, 
for  he  who  hath  beheld  it  will  live  after  the  man¬ 
ner  of  that  city,  having  nothing  to  do  with  any 
other.  1 

V 

In  a  preceding  paragraph  I  quoted  with  ap¬ 
proval  Professor  Butcher’s  judgment  that  ‘‘while 
philosophy  had  for  the  Jews  no  meaning,  history 
had  a  deeper  meaning  than  it  bore  to  any  other 
people.”  Now  I  would  go  forward  to  what 
seems  to  me  to  be  an  important  modification  of 
this  judgment.  In  a  fine  traditional  sense  it  is 
assuredly  true  that  philosophy  is  a  creation  of 
the  Greek,  and  its  historic  course  has  been  over¬ 
lorded  by  the  Greek  intelligence.  It  was  the 
Greeks  who  laid  the  foundations  of  all  those 
sciences  by  which  we  can  explain,  in  a  sense, 
how  such  a  world  as  ours  is  possible;  but  not 
Greek  science,  and  no  abstract  science  or  phi¬ 
losophy,  can  explain  why  our  world  is  just  this 
world  from  among  all  that  are  possible.  For 
such  an  explanation  a  differing  philosophic 
mode,  a  teleological,  a  dramatic  mode  is  alone 
capable;  and  such  a  mode  is  that  in  which  He¬ 
brew  thought  is  couched;  while  from  the  He¬ 
brew  it  has  passed  into  the  center  and  has  set 
the  horizons  of  Occidental  culture.  The  sense 


HEBRAISM  AS  A  PHILOSOPHIC  MODE  491 


of  history  is  indeed  its  midmost  chord,  but  his¬ 
tory  is  itself  a  thing  vastly  philosophic. 

Two  images  lie  at  the  core  of  all  explanatory 
representation — the  image  of  extension  in  Space 
and  the  image  of  projection  in  Time,  vitally  the 
image  of  a  man’s  body  and  the  image  of  a  man’s 
years.  In  the  arts  the  two  correspond,  with  curi¬ 
ous  fidelity,  to  the  distinction  of  the  plastic  arts 
from  the  art  of  music;  and  it  is  surely  not  with¬ 
out  point  that  our  aesthetic  inheritance  from  the 
Greeks  is  splendidly  spatial,  giving  us  not  only 
our  most  superb  representations  of  the  human 
body  but  also  the  glory  of  all  dimensional  shapes, 
whereas  from  the  Hebrew  there  is  but  the  one 
tradition  of  the  harper  and  the  psalm.  And  even 
as  for  the  forms  of  sense  and  of  art  there  are  two 
moulds,  into  which  their  substance  is  cast,  so  is  it 
also  of  our  realm  of  inner  reflection.  The  field 
of  possibility,  which  is  the  field  of  abstract  think¬ 
ing,  is  charted  in  multiple  dimensions,  in  mor- 
phic  figures,  in  states,  forms,  analytical  planes 
and  cubes,  in  that  vaster  geometry  which  cir¬ 
cumscribes  all  Nature  within  a  sphere.  But  the 
course  of  actuality  is  linear  and  undividing;  its 
variety  must  come  from  the  pageant  of  phantas¬ 
mal  events  which  are  the  historic  display  of  a 
Truth  seated  in  the  fated  fact  that  out  of  all  that 
might  have  been  there  is  realized  but  the  one 
life  that  is.  Such  a  conception  is  narrow  in  its 
course,  but  it  is  intense  in  its  convictions:  for  it 
the  efficient  and  final  causes  are  the  deeply  oper¬ 
ative,  and  the  governance  of  life  is  heavy  with 
responsibility.  Is  there  aught  of  marvel  in  the 
clear  fact  that  for  two  thousand  years,  while 


Greek 

thought 

spatial, 

Hebrew 

temporal 


492 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


First  and 
Last  Things 


the  Greek  sciences  have  been  fitfully  cultivated 
in  cloister  and  closet,  the  polities  of  men  have 
been  governed  and  dominated  by  the  Hebraic 
philosophy  of  history? 

For  it  is  assuredly  a  philosophy.  Cosmogony 
— Cataclysm — Redemption — Apocalyptic  Hope  : 
this  is  a  form  of  thought,  a  mode  of  truth,  and 
though  it  be  at  its  fountain  perchance  no  more 
than  the  projection  of  a  man’s  days  upon  the 
flood  of  an  eternity,  none  the  less  it  is  in  such 
an  image  that  pilgrim  humanity  must  forever 
set  its  faith — a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day,  a  pillar  of 
fire  by  night. 


j 


XV.  APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 

I 

I  AM  a  member  of  no  church  and  a  participant 
in  no  Christian  communion;  nor  have  I  ever 
been  such.  This  is  perhaps  strange  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  I  was  reared  under  Christian  in¬ 
fluences  and  that  all  my  traditions  are  those  of 
what  is  called  the  Christian  civilization,  of 
which,  indeed,  I  am  a  student  and  in  an  humble 
way  an  expositor,  for  by  profession  I  am  a 
teacher  of  the  history  of  the  philosophy  of  the 
western  world.  Nor  have  I  been  insensitive  to 
these  influences  and  traditions.  The  writings  of 
Patristic  and  Scholastic  churchmen  and  of  the 
Christian  philosophers  arouse  in  me  a  keen  and 
sympathetic  interest;  I  am  deeply  stirred  by  the 
spectacle  which  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  present 
of  a  whole  people  struggling  through  a  millen¬ 
nium  toward  a  spiritual,  a  Messianic  revelation; 
and  I  am  reverent  before  the  nobility  of  the 
Gospels.  In  another  mode,  I  am  moved  by  the 
outer  symbols  of  Christianity;  for  I  cannot  raise 
my  eyes  to  the  image  of  a  saint  or  view  depic¬ 
tions  of  the  passion  of  Christ  without  a  quick¬ 
ened  heart,  while  even  such  unadorned  tokens  as 
the  palm  or  the  cross  or  the  sight  of  a  Gothic 
spire  command  from  me  an  instinctive  genuflec¬ 
tion  of  the  spirit.  I  have  attended  many  forms 
of  Christian  service,  and  in  all  of  them,  from  the 
most  formal  and  ritualistic  to  the  simplest,  I 

493 


sita 


494 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


A  symbolic 
dream 


have  found  in  myself  a  sense  of  propriety  of 
presence,  of  fellowship  if  you  will,  utterly  dif¬ 
ferent  from  the  aloof  curiosity  with  which  I  have 
observed  the  rites  of  Brahmans  or  of  Chinese 
joss  priests.  Nay,  brought  though  I  have  been 
to  something  like  devotion  to  the  art  and  the 
philosophy  of  the  classical  Hellene,  I  know,  and 
am  content  to  know,  that  there  is  an  untravers- 
able  abyss  between  the  Greek  and  the  Christian 
conceptions  of  life,  and  that  this  Western  pagan¬ 
ism,  intimate  as  it  is  in  our  culture,  is,  like  the 
paganisms  of  the  East,  forever  foreign  to  my 
spirit.  In  some  undefined  sense,  although  I  am 
no  churchman,  I  am  a  Christian;  and  it  is,  after 
all,  not  surprising  that,  from  time  to  time,  I  have 
wavered,  considering  whether  the  reasons  which 
have  held  me  from  formally  uniting  with  some 
Christian  sect  are  sufficient. 

Those  reasons  seem  to  me  to  be  symbolized, 
in  a  way,  by  a  very  early  and  vivid  dream.  My 
mother  died  in  my  fourth  year,  and  the  dream 
was  born  of  the  impression  which  her  death 
made  upon  me.  In  it,  I  seemed  to  be  leaning 
upon  her  knee  as  she  sat  in  a  camp-chair  in  a 
secluded  corner  of  a  field,  and  I  looked  up  into 
her  face  while  she  taught  me ;  and  then,  of  a  sud¬ 
den,  the  chair  was  empty  and  there  was  a  grave- 
mound  beside  me,  and  my  heart  was  desolate 
with  fear;  whereupon,  my  father  and  my  broth¬ 
ers  and  sisters  came  to  lead  me  away,  and  we 
walked  toward  a  bridge,  which  they  passed  over, 
summoning  me  to  follow;  but  for  me  the  bridge 
was  impassable;  I  was  drawn  backward,  des¬ 
perately,  toward  the  new-made  grave,  and  I 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


495 


Stood  alone,  on  the  hither  side,  paralyzed  and  in 
tears.  As  an  infant  I  had  been  baptized  by  de¬ 
vout  parents.  My  father  was  a  clergyman,  and, 
as  I  came  to  recognize,  a  man  of  uncommon 
goodness,  whose  life  was  in  consonance  with  his 
profession  of  faith;  and  the  foster-mother  who 
came  to  take  my  mother’s  place,  was  a  woman 
of  rare  piety  and  devotion  and  understanding: 
the  influences  of  example  in  my  own  home  were 
all  conducive  to  respect  for  the  religion  of  my 
elders.  Nor  was  there  wanting  instruction;  my 
mind  was  early  filled  with  Biblical  images  (for 
which,  today,  I  am  most  grateful) ;  as  a  child  I 
had  visions  of  angels,  I  saw  the  foot  and  chariot 
of  Elijah  in  the  fires  of  heaven,  I  shuddered  at 
the  torments  of  martyrs,  and  I  figured  to  myself 
the  awesomeness  of  the  great  Judgment;  in- 
nerly,  too,  I  was  abashed  at  the  thought  of  the 
all-seeing  eye  of  God,  which  could  pierce  to  my 
remotest  wish.  But  I  was  not  given  to  con¬ 
fidences  in  such  matters.  For  no  reason  which 
I  can  yet  understand,  I  had,  always,  something 
of  that  same  feeling  of  desolation  and  isolation 
which  marked  the  dream  that  followed  my 
mother’s  death;  and,  although  I  said  my  prayers 
as  I  was  taught,  I  remember  that  when  by  my¬ 
self  I  prayed,  it  was  to  the  angel  of  my  mother, 
for  I  quite  believed  her  to  be  near. 

One  phase  of  my  early  training  is  of  import¬ 
ance  as  affecting  my  later  attitude  toward  church 
affiliation.  The  church  which  my  father  served 
rests  its  interpretation  of  Christianity  upon  be¬ 
lief  in  an  experience  of  conversion  which  is  in 
the  nature  of  an  intense  and  inner  illumination, 


Christian 

nurture 


Theory  of 
conversion 


496 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


“Seeking 

Salvation” 


4 


sudden  and  indubitable,  and  indeed  almost  con¬ 
vulsive  as  a  change  of  life.  Already  in  early 
childhood,  I  was  given  to  look  forward  to  the 
time  when  this  change  might  come  into  my  own 
life  and  I  pass  into  the  fold  of  the  consciously 
saved,  and  was  given,  therefore,  to  feel  that  there 
existed  an  imperative  distinction  between  the 
true  Christian  and  such  a  groper  after  light  as  I 
must  be.  In  a  way  I  resented  this  idea;  never¬ 
theless,  under  its  influence,  when  I  was  thirteen 
or  thereabouts,  I  made  the  great  essay,  seeking 
salvation,  as  it  was  called;  and  I  prayed  to  God, 
especially  for  the  conviction  of  sin  which  I  did 
not  truly  feel  and  which  I  had  been  told  must 
come  first;  and  then  to  Christ  Jesus,  because  he 
had  been  a  suffering  man;  but  most  and  most 
passionately  to  the  spirit  of  my  mother.  Yet  out 
of  it  all  there  came  no  illumination,  no  strange 
and  perfervid  inner  glory  such  as  others  about 
me  testified  to;  and  I  went  from  the  altar  of 
the  close  and  crowded  church,  out  into  the 
winter  starlight,  filled  with  sadness  and  chagrin 
and  the  resentful  feeling  that  I  had  been  fooled. 
So  far  as  I  can  recollect  that  is  the  last  time  that 
I  have  uttered  a  word  of  prayer,  and  I  never 
went  onward  to  membership  in  the  church.  Pos¬ 
sibly,  had  I  been  reared  in  a  more  formal  and 
less  exacting  mode  of  the  faith,  I  should  have 
become  a  church-member  naturally  and  without 
ado.  As  it  was,  this  experience  emphasized  for 
many  years  my  reclusiveness  in  religious  mat¬ 
ters;  and  I  made  no  confidants  of  my  parents. 

Psychologists,  I  am  well  aware,  give  glib  ex¬ 
planations  of  such  experiences  as  I  have  narrated 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


497 


— explanations  which  impress  me  as  idle  and 
without  penetration, — and  they  would  nod  sage 
assents  were  I  to  go  forward,  biographically, 
through  a  youth  of  curious  inquiry  and  of  facile 
scepticisms  into  a  maturity  of  objective  study 
and  cautious  reservation:  it  would  all  stand  out 
as  a  case,  not  exceptional,  but  typical  of  the 
modern  man,  and  subject  to  recognized  formulae. 
For  myself,  I  care  nothing  for  the  formula,  be¬ 
ing  confident  that  I  have  tested  the  flimsiness  of 
their  tissues;  but  in  the  other  fact,  that  my  case 
is  a  typical  one,  human  and  modern,  I  find  sig¬ 
nificance.  For  the  question  of  the  Church  is  a 
social  question  of  great  magnitude;  and  it  is 
worth  the  while  of  men,  both  within  and  without 
it,  to  ask  its  meaning  in  our  civilization:  to  ask 
how  or  whether  it  should  be  preserved,  and  how 
or  whether  or  in  what  sense  our  civilization  shall 
continue  to  be  Christian.  The  answers  to  such 
questions  must  come  ultimately  from  the  experi¬ 
ences  and  reflections  of  individuals,  and  in  par¬ 
ticular,  I  suppose,  from  an  examination  of  the 
considerations  which  hold  men  who,  while  yet 
they  are  in  Christendom,  are  outside  the  pale  of 
the  church. 

The  foundations  of  my  own  attitude  lie  in 
those  experiences  of  childhood  which  I  have  in¬ 
dicated;  but  maturing  years  have  brought  for¬ 
ward  other  considerations  and  have  given  the 
old  a  new  definition.  I  have  discovered,  of 
course,  that  the  modes  of  Christian  conformity 
are  various,  and  that  both  in  rite  and  doctrine 
the  religion  is  given  many  interpretations.  In¬ 
deed,  the  forms  and  latitudes  of  the  church  are 


Psycho¬ 
logical  ex¬ 
planations 


Reflections 

of 

maturity 


498 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


False 

positions 


SO  many  that  it  would  seem  that  no  man  need 
be  solitary  in  matters  of  faith.  Nevertheless, 
there  are  qualms  and  restraints  (differing  with 
men)  which  act  as  effective  brakes  even  upon 
those  who  believe,  as  I  do,  that  Christianity  is 
so  intrinsic  in  our  civilization  that  to  permit  it 
to  pass  would  mean  cultural,  nay,  spiritual  sui¬ 
cide.  The  problem  is  not  a  light  one,  even  when 
the  affairs  of  this  world  alone  are  in  regard; 
and  it  is  but  a  superficial  mind  that  can  fail  to 
perceive  that  the  relation  of  church  and  state — 
each  institution  in  its  fuller  sense — presents  a 
problem  which  the  peoples  of  the  West  have  not 
yet  solved,  nor  in  fact  profoundly  considered. 

Such  issues  give  significance  to  individual  ex¬ 
periences,  and  before  all  to  the  reflective  atti¬ 
tudes  which  hold  men,  not  thoughtlessly,  outside 
the  church.  And  here,  to  revert,  I  come  to  my 
own  deterrent  difficulty,  which  is  not,  I  imagine, 
remote  from  what  is  the  underlying  motive  of 
many  another  churchless  man.  It  is  related  to 
matters  of  the  intellect,  but  it  is  by  no  means 
solely  intellectual;  for  it  is  in  the  nature  of  a 
fear,  the  fear  of  being  put  by  church-member¬ 
ship  into  a  false  position — false  before  others 
outside  the  church,  false  before  those  within  the 
church,  false  to  myself.  This  falsity  should  not 
follow  from  any  conscious  untruth  on  my  part, 
but  rather  from  the  expectations  and  under¬ 
standing  which  a  formal  entering  into  the  church 
would  arouse  in  others,  from  the  fact  that  ' 
churches  are,  after  all,  social  institutions,  with 

...  'j 

established  interpretations  too  familiar  in  men^s 
minds  to  be  easily  modified:  the  entering  into  a  | 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


499 


church  is,  as  a  fact,  a  profession  of  faith,  and  a 
profession  for  which  there  is  a  conventional  and 
unevadable  reading.  And  this  could  easily  make 
the  whole  act  an  intolerable  falsification  in  each 
of  the  three  directions  I  have  indicated.  For,  to 
consider  first  those  who  are  outside  the  church 
with  whom  I  come  in  contact,  how  should  I  ap¬ 
pear  to  the  inquisitive  and  sceptical  youth  (chil¬ 
dren  of  the  hour)  who  come  to  my  lectures?  I 
am  a  teacher,  and  a  teacher  of  philosophy,  and 
my  whole  power  must  depend  upon  independ¬ 
ence  and  sincerity  of  thought.  As  a  non-church- 
member  I  can  speak  to  those  who  are  not  in  the 
church  without  raising  any  presumption  of  bias 
or  parti-pris.  But  were  I  known  to  be  of  this 
congregation  or  that,  the  case  would  be  quite 
different:  “He  is  a  conformist,”  the  youth  would 
say,  “and  must  cover  the  truth  in  the  interests 
of  his  confession.”  And  influence  would  slip 
from  me.  Again,  of  those  who  are  within  the 
church:  my  understanding  of  the  faith  is  not 
that  of  the  laity  nor  is  my  mode  of  expression 
that  of  the  clergy;  as  a  student  of  philosophy 
and  of  history,  I  cannot  accept  religion  as  un¬ 
analyzed  impression  nor  as  uncriticized  tradi¬ 
tion,  nor  can  I  accommodate  myself  to  the 
veiled  language  of  parable.  Perhaps  many  a 
layman  and  many  a  cleric  would  think  as  I  do 
in  regard  to  the  meaning  of  the  Christian  religion 
were  we  to  arrive  at  common  speech,  but  the 
great  mass  of  the  laity  would  judge  me  by  stand¬ 
ards  which  I  could  never  endure  and  few  indeed 
of  the  clergy  care  to  conquer  the  philosophical 
mode  of  speech:  their  own  is  the  differing  tradi- 


The  power 
of  the 
teacher 


500 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Inward 

falsification 


I 

Church 
and  creed 


tion  of  emotion.  These  are  falsities  with  respect 
to  other  men  which  would  veritably  destroy  in 
me  the  profession  of  philosophy,  though  this  is 
perchance  no  great  thing  in  itself.  But  beyond 
there  is  the  third  falsification,  to  myself.  For 
while  I  am  now  square  with  myself  and  unafraid 
before  God  in  the  profession  of  my  belief,  how 
can  I  be  certain  that,  having  adopted  old  and 
double-meaning  creeds,  even  outwardly,  I  should 
be  able  to  maintain  myself  in  unchanging  devo¬ 
tion  to  the  truth?  There  are  many  matters, 
touching  religion,  concerning  which  I  well  know 
there  are  perplexities  and  reservations  in  my 
mind;  some  day  these  may  force  themselves  in¬ 
sistently  into  my  life;  and  on  such  a  day,  can  I  be 
even-eyed  to  the  truth  if  I  have  already  com¬ 
mitted  my  mouth  to  words  and  forms?  Had  I, 
like  Descartes,  been  reared  in  a  church  which  lays 
its  first  stress  upon  an  outward  submission  and 
not  upon  an  inward  conversion,  I  might  indeed 
have  adopted  his  admirable  rule  of  conformity 
until  the  period  of  doubt  were  passed;  but  I  have 
not  been  so  reared,  and  have  not,  therefore,  first 
found  myself  within  the  fold  of  a  church  from 
which  no  man  would  for  any  light  reason  de¬ 
part. 

Here,  then,  is  the  great  deterrent  which  holds 
me  from  the  church;  for  no  man  can  conceive 
that  his  soul’s  salvation  or  the  welfare  of  others 
can  be  furthered  by  any  form  of  public  lie  or 
self-deceit.  But  why,  one  may  ask,  need  there 
be  this  difference  of  interpretation?  Or  what 
value  do  you  find  in  Christianity  which  makes 
you  loth  to  give  up  the  name,  and  yet  unwilling 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


501 


to  adhere  to  its  ecclesiastical  creeds?  The  ques¬ 
tion  is,  after  all,  the  central  one,  to  which  the 
whole  matter  of  the  church  is  secondary.  Is  the 
Christian  religion  true  in  a  sense  which  modern 
men  may  understand  and  value?  And  to  this,  in 
answer,  I  can  but  proffer  my  own  understanding 
of  the  faith. 


II 

At  the  core  of  the  Christian  religion  there  is  a 
dogma — voiced  in  no  creed,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
— which  cuts  deep  to  the  truth  of  human  nature. 
It  is  the  dogma  of  the  antithesis  and  struggle  of 
the  flesh  and  the  spirit,  of  the  World  and  the 
Word,  the  dogma  of  the  suffering  and  striving 
man,  which  is  nowhere  so  vividly  expressed  as  in 
the  terrible  image  of  St.  Paul,  e/xo6  koV/aos  earavpioraL^ 
Kayo)  TM  Koapap — -‘‘the  world  is  crucified  unto  me 
and  I  unto  the  world.’’  Out  of  this  dogma  have 
come  the  sharp-limned  dualisms  of  Christian 
conception :  corruption  and  incorruption,  body 
and  soul,  salvation  and  damnation.  Paradise  and 
Hell,  God  and  the  Devil,  two  Ways,  a  narrow 
and  a  broad,  and  there  where  they  part  an  in¬ 
exorable  Judgment;  and  out  of  it,  in  exhortation 
and  practice,  have  come  the  disciplines,  asceti¬ 
cisms,  martyrdoms  of  the  body,  castigations  of 
the  soul,  which  have  made  of  Christianity  pre¬ 
eminently  a  religion  of  the  will.  Rebirth  and 
Resurrection,  and  death  of  the  carnal  that  a  man 
may  be  reborn  into  the  spiritual,  and  death  of 
the  physical  in  order  that  a  man  may  find  resur¬ 
rection  into  Life — these  express  the  grimness 
and  relentlessness  of  a  faith  which  demands  utter 


Christian 

dualism 


33 


502 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Moral 

realities 


destruction  of  the  objects  of  its  hostility,  even 
though  a  man  rend  the  flesh  of  his  body  and 
cast  away  its  living  members.  Greek  morals  de¬ 
manded  of  a  man  temperance,  self-mastery,  self- 
restraint;  but  Christian  salvation  demands  of 
him  self-conquest  and  in  part  self-annihilation. 
It  is  a  religion  without  compromise,  a  religion 
of  war,  and  this  is  why  its  terrene  church  is  a 
Church  Militant  and  its  supernal  church  a 
Church  Triumphant. 

This,  I  say,  cuts  deep  to  the  truth  of  human 
nature,  and  deep  to  the  truth  of  the  world.  First, 
and  most  profoundly,  it  is  a  moral  fact;  there  is 
no  toying  with  the  forms  of  desire;  there  is  no 
equivocacy  in  the  qualities  of  the  virtues;  there 
are  no  indulgences,  and  absolution  follows  only 
on  relinquishment;  good  is  shining  and  intense, 
and  evil  is  black  and  redemptionless.  There 
is,  I  know,  a  monistic  turn  to  theology,  which 
would  exorcise  evil  with  delicate  phrases  and 
save  the  face  of  the  Devil  in  seeking  to  justify 
God;  but  such  theology  runs,  I  firmly  believe, 
counter  to  the  whole  grain  of  the  faith;  the 
Christian  religion  is  not  monistic,  it  is  dualistic, 
and  its  dualism  is  that  of  a  relentless  and  eternal 
war.  It  is  just  such  a  war  as  every  man  knows 
in  his  own  soul;  life  is  unrelaxing  choice,  and 
choice  is  of  good  and  evil :  complexion  this  fact 
as  you  may,  its  features  are  fixed;  and  it  is  for 
this  reason  that  I  should  say,  with  Pascal,  that 
Christianity  is  true  to  human  nature,  and  there¬ 
fore  worthy  of  respect. 

There  is  a  theological  difficulty  connected 
with  this  moral  aspect  of  Christian  dualism 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


503 


which  the  orthodox  theologians  have  never  satis¬ 
factorily  solved;  but  it  is  not,  first  of  all,  with 
this  aspect  that  I  am  concerned,  but  with  an¬ 
other,  an  intellectual  phase  of  the  dualism  which 
is  in  a  way  of  more  importance,  since  it  touches 
more  nearly  the  main  current  of  modern  scepti¬ 
cism  and  the  moving  dubieties  of  the  modern 
man.  For  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  whole 
Renaissance  culture  of  Europe,  within  which  our 
lives  are  cast,  has  produced  an  intellectual  con¬ 
ceit  (the  thing  which  the  Eighteenth  Century 
called  Reason)  that  of  itself  makes  the  recogni¬ 
tion  of  Christian  truth  difficult.  We  are 
educated  in  modes  of  thinking  and  in  a  para¬ 
phernalia  of  science  which  are  far  more  condu¬ 
cive  to  doubt  than  to  faith, — or,  as  I  should 
prefer  to  put  it,  which  absorb  us  in  the  encrusta¬ 
tions  rather  than  lead  us  into  the  motives  of  life. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  our  culture  is  irre¬ 
ligious  nor  non-Christian;  the  Renaissance  is  not 
a  Restoration  of  paganism ;  the  intervention  of 
Christianity  made  that  once  for  all  impossible. 
But  none  can  deny  that  the  spirit  of  modernity 
has  clouded  the  eye  of  faith;  nor  that,  in  par¬ 
ticular,  the  edifices  of  our  sciences — temples  of 
learning  and  altars  of  knowledge,  as  we  figure 
them, — have  commanded  from  many  minds  all 
that  they  have  to  give  of  reverence  and  devo¬ 
tion.  As  I  see  it,  the  whole  consequence  harks 
back  to  a  partial  and  specialized  understanding 
of  the  meaning  of  that  Reason  which  we  have 
made  into  the  staff  and  the  support  of  our  lives; 
for  in  reason  itself  there  is  a  dualism,  related 
to  the  moral  dualism  upon  which  Christianity 


Theological 

difficulty 


Renaissance 
not  pagan 


504 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Scientific 

scepticism 


Science 
in  image 


rests,  whose  understanding  is  the  true  key  to 
faith — -at  least,  where  want  of  faith  is  of  the  in¬ 
tellect. 

For  what,  after  all,  is  the  nature  of  scientific, 
rationalistic  scepticism,  save  it  be  a  distortion, 
an  hypertrophy  of  the  periphery  of  life?  Re¬ 
ligions  are  man-made,  it  is  said;  and  the  words 
are  uttered  as  a  reproach.  But  is  science  any 
the  less  man-made?  Its  numbers  are  the  ten 
digits  of  our  hands;  its  measures  are  our  palms 
and  paces.  By  a  vast  process  of  dilation  and 
fission,  division  and  multiplication  of  its  own 
forms — like  the  monstrous  multiplications  of  in¬ 
fusorial  life — it  spawns  and  spreads  about  the 
whole  circumference  of  human  interests,  and 
generates  a  sort  of  comb,  a  coralline  structure, 
with  its  own  dead  casts  for  a  supporting  frame 
and  life  only  at  its  ever-perishing  surface.  With¬ 
in  this  colony  of  bones  there  are  tunnels  and 
cells,  paths  of  no  issue,  and  tortuous  courses  to 
the  living  waters;  and  our  art  of  life  becomes  an 
art  of  threading  the  labyrinth  and  our  craft  a 
craft  of  motion.  For  though  I  speak  in  a  figure, 
it  is  close  indeed  to  the  truth  of  what  science  is 
and  of  what  it  pretends  to  be — a  guide  to  the 
ordering  of  our  physical  migrations  to  and  fro 
upon  the  repeating  surface  of  a  circumscribed 
sphere.  Our  ideas  are  like  frail  antennae  with 
which  we  explore  spaces  beyond  spaces,  yet 
when  we  move  it  is  with  feet  which  cling  to  the 
soil;  and  we  know  that  into  that  soil  our  most 
airy  mansions  will  shrink  with  our  decaying 
bones. 

I  present  in  an  image  what  analysis  will  verify. 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


505 


Our  mansion  of  rationalism  is  built  up  in  a 
mathematical  mode:  its  bricks  are  numbers  and 
its  apices  are  formulae;  and  the  joy  we  have  in 
it  is  the  childish  joy  of  endlessly  assembling  and 
endlessly  toppling  over  our  structural  fanta5ies. 
It  has  practical  values;  that  is,  it  guides  our 
wanderings  over  the  surface  of  this  Earth;  and 
indeed,  it  is  more  like  a  map,  both  in  its  manner 
of  making  and  in  its  uses,  than  like  aught  else; 
for  it  may  show  a  course,  but  it  cannot  reveal  the 
motive  of  the  journey  nor  the  nature  of  the 
destination.  To  understand  the  latter  there 
must  be  another  form  of  knowledge  and  another 
type  of  reason,  another  truth,  which,  even  in  the 
scale  of  human  experience,  speaks  in  other 
modes.  The  mathematical,  and,  as  we  say, 
scientific  manner  of  thought,  was  long  ago 
named  the  operation  of  the  dividing  intellect  and 
its  reasonings  platted  as  discursive;  but  there 
was  also,  long  ago,  name  given  to  the  type  of 
reason  which  embraces  both  the  presuppositions 
and  the  after-completion  of  science,  and  because 
it  operates  through  insight  and  revelation  it  was 
called  the  intuitive  reason.  And  with  this,  I 
come  again  to  that  central  dualism  which,  as  I 
have  said,  has  an  intellectual  as  well  as  a  moral 
foundation. 

Intuitive  reason  is  in  no  sense  remote  from 
our  daily  life.  It  is  altogether  simple  and  hu¬ 
man.  In  form  it  might  be  described  as  the  rea¬ 
son  of  metaphor,  for  it  is  present  in  every 
metaphorical  expression;  the  “gift  of  tongues” 
is  a  Scriptural  phrase  which  I  think  denotes  it; 
and  that  it  is  a  gift,  in  some  sense  an  inspira- 


Mathe- 

matical 

reason 


Intuitive 

reason 


506 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Plato 


Origen 


Dante 


Pascal 


tion,  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  it  is  our  poets, 
masters  of  metaphor,  whom  men  prize  as  their 
wisest.  Plato  is  no  doubt  the  father  of  the  dis¬ 
tinction  between  the  two  types  of  reason,  as  he 
is  master  in  the  use  of  both, — beyond  Sidvoia  is 
v6r}(n<s,  beyond  dialectic  is  Oeoypla,  insight.  It  is 
present  also  in  the  great  conception  of  Origen 
who  saw  in  history  not  merely  a  chain  of  events, 
to  be  told  link  by  link;  but  throughout  it  a  mean¬ 
ing,  a  Logos,  the  perception  of  which  is  wisdom; 
and  again  this  distinction  is  the  prime  subtlety 
of  Dante,  who  strives  to  combine  both  modes  of 
expression  in  the  great  poem  which  he  describes 
as  having  a  double  sense,  per  literam  and  also  per 
significata  per  literam,  the  first  a  literal,  the  second 
an  allegorical  and  mystical  meaning.  So,  once 
more,  Pascal:  “the  heart  has  its  reasons  which 
the  reason  knoweth  not”;  there  is  a  light  of  na¬ 
ture  and  there  is  an  illumination  of  faith, — 
though  only  the  former  is  human;  the  latter  is 
the  grace  of  God. 

Both  Plato  and  Pascal  were  eminent  in  mathe¬ 
matics,  masters  of  the  science  of  their  day  and 
competent  judges  of  the  significance  of  science 
in  human  thought,  not  only  in  their  day  but  in 
ours  also;  and  it  is  in  words  which  seem  to  echo 
Plato  that  Pascal  lays  bare  the  root  of  scientific 
scepticisms :  “Our  soul  is  thrown  into  the  body, 
where  it  finds  number,  time,  dimensions;  it  rea¬ 
sons  thereon  and  calls  this  Nature,  Necessity, 
and  can  believe  in  nothing  else.”  Number,  time, 
dimensions, — these  are  the  tools  of  the  dividing 
intellect;  these  are  the  measures  of  our  sciences, 
the  projections  of  our  map-makers.  But  the  na- 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


507 


ture  which  they  figure  is  strangely  empty,  and 
it  is  utterly  distorted  if  it  have  not  a  Logos  be¬ 
hind  the  image,  a  mystical  beneath  the  literal 
intention.  Plato,  Origen,  Dante,  Pascal, — the 
great  thinkers  of  our  race,  century  by  century, 
have  perceived  this  fact;  and  they  have  placed 
over  against  the  reason  of  number  a  reason  of 
metaphor,  over  against  the  physical  a  spiritual 
reading,  an  act  of  faith,  without  which  not  num¬ 
ber  itself  can  form  and  combine.  These  men 
were  judges  of  the  scepticisms  of  their  own  day, 
of  which  they  had  taken  the  measure,  and  their 
utterances  are  judgments  upon  the  scepticisms 
of  our  day  as  well:  for  in  science  there  is  nothing 
new  excepting  detail,  the  measures  of  it  were 
long  since  set  by  our  digits  and  our  paces;  and 
in  scepticisms  there  is  nothing  new.  There  were 
sceptics  in  Corinth  who  doubted  with  the  same 
doubts  wherewith  men  doubt  now,  ‘Tn  whom 
the  god  of  this  world  hath  blinded  the  minds  of 
them  which  believe  not,  lest  the  light  of  the 
glorious  gospel  of  Christ,  who  is  the  image  of 
God,  should  shine  unto  them.”  It  is,  of  course, 
no  answer  to  a  doubt  to  say  that  it  is  old;  but 
at  least  this  fact  should  take  from  it  the  noise 
of  modernity,  and  perhaps  it  should  persuade 
those  who  are  moved  by  it  to  examine  again  the 
foundations  of  their  convictions,  to  inquire 
whether  truth  may  not  indeed  speak  in  a  double 
tongue,  and  whether,  in  the  great  dualism  of  our 
nature,  there  may  not  be  intellectual  as  well  as 
moral  insights  which  must  fortify  us  in  the  faith. 


Metaphori¬ 
cal  reason 


Corinthian 

sceptics 


508 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


III 


Moral  and 
rational 
dualisms 
one 


Patrist 

maxims 


Now  the  twin  dualisms,  the  one  of  which,  that 
of  good  and  evil,  salvation  and  damnation,  is 
moral,  while  the  other,  that  of  discursive  and 
intuitive  reason,  or,  as  often  put,  of  reason  and 
faith,  is  rational,  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in¬ 
separable.  Both  are  of  foundational  importance 
in  the  Christian  religion,  and  to  a  single  end : 
for  the  moral  dualism  of  good  and  evil  is  the 
whole  motive  of  the  drama  of  Redemption: 
Adam’s  fall,  the  passion  of  Christ,  the  Last 
Judgment, — the  whole  image  of  Sin  and  Atone¬ 
ment  is  the  visible  working  out  of  the  war  of 
God  and  the  Devil;  while,  in  a  manner  which  for 
the  theologians  was  no  less  conscious,  the  con¬ 
flicts  of  reason  and  faith  have  been  the  sharpest 
stripes  of  Christian  discipline.  Credo  quia  absur- 
diim,  expressing  the  defiance  which  faith  gives  to 
reason.  Credo  nt  intelligam,  uttering  the  humility 
of  reason  in  the  presence  of  faith,  and  the  wistful 
ontological  surmise,  Duhito  .  .  .  ergo  Deus  est  ! 
— these  and  their  like,  ranging  from  a  glad 
recognition  of  the  miracle  of  faith  to  an  exalted 
sense  of  its  power,  are  the  theological  expression 
of  men’s  perception  of  the  twofoldness  of  their 
own  powers,  and  of  the  disciplinary,  the  moral, 
meaning  of  this  twofoldness.  There  is,  and  the 
theologians  have  known  it,  an  obsessing  danger, 
not  to  the  mind  alone  but  to  the  whole  immortal 
soul,  in  an  undisciplined  devotion  to  things  of 
the  intellect;  and  in  faith,  which  is  the  dis¬ 
ciplinary  insight  which  keeps  reason  from 
monstrosity,  they  have  discovered  a  redemption 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


509 


of  mind  and  soul.  It  is  in  this  that  lies  Christian 
humility  (never  the  servile  thing  Nietzsche  im¬ 
agined  it  to  be),  and  it  is  through  this  that  men 
escape  the  blindness  of  mind  inflicted  by  the 
god  of  this  world,  which  is  the  blindness  of  their 
own  petty  conceits. 

Now  there  is  a  kind  of  pact,  if  I  may  so  put  it, 
between  the  Devil  and  the  discursive  reason — 
or,  to  speak  with  phrase  less  light,  to  live  only 
with  the  discursive  reason  is  to  abide  in  a  tomb 
and  to  live  a  living  death.  Science  has  three  di¬ 
mensions:  an  historical  dimension,  whose  plausi¬ 
bilities  and  illusions  are  those  of  the  cinemato¬ 
graph;  a  structural  dimension,  which  we  call  the 
organization  of  knowledge;  and  a  practical  di¬ 
mension,  represented  by  the  absorptions  of  sense 
and  appetite.  In  any  one  of  these  a  mind  may 
become  so  engrossed  that  it  will  wind  itself 
cocoon-like  in  cerements  of  its  own  weaving, 
shutting  off  its  vision  of  the  heavens,  and  perish¬ 
ing  as  a  husk.  These  are  the  perils  of  this  world, 
and  the  distortions  of  nature,  and  the  paths  that 
lead  to  the  final  obliteration  of  the  earth-bound — 
for  all  alike,  they  perish,  and  as  surely  as  the  sun 
sets,  the  time  will  come  when  the  vanities  of 
our  cities  and  our  books,  of  our  numbers  and 
our  tales,  shall  be  swept  into  the  night.  And 
that  will  in  truth  be  a  judgment  day. 

Herein,  I  am  aware,  I  touch  upon  matters  that 
affect  not  only  many  who  doubt,  but  many  who 
profess  the  Christian  religion, — nay,  herein  I 
come  to  what  I  conceive  to  be  the  very  heart  of 
the  true  Christian  theology,  where  the  orthodox 
many  will  not,  I  know,  readily  follow  me.  For 


Christian 

humility 


The  Devil 
and 

discursive 

reason 


The  heart 
of  theology 


510 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Christian 
truth  and 
historical 
verities 


The  world’s 
reality 


to  the  many  the  truth  of  Christianity  turns  upon 
the  historical  verities  of  the  Scriptures,  and  if 
a  tradition  lie  or  a  miracle  fail  their  faith  is  shat¬ 
tered;  whereas  to  my  mode  of  thinking  there  is 
not  an  episode  of  the  two  Testaments  which 
might  not  be  altered  or  replaced  without  im¬ 
pugning  Christian  truth ;  for  to  my  mode  of 
thinking  each  of  these  episodes,  and  the  whole 
of  the  two  Testaments,  and  the  whole  of  human 
history  and  of  the  history  of  this  world,  and  all 
that  is  therein  of  art  and  science  and  learning 
and  of  material  grandeur  and  of  material  ruin, 
in  all  there  is  not  an  episode  nor  a  form  that  is 
other  than  an  image  with  a  meaning,  a  letter  in 
a  book.  Not  the  image  but  the  meaning,  not  the 
letters  but  the  Logos,  are  the  world’s  truth,  its 
inner  fact  and  its  sole  enduring  fact. 

For  consider — what  is,  what  can  be  the  height 
and  depth  and  length  and  breadth  of  this  our 
world  if  it  be  not  from  hour  to  hour  the  consum¬ 
mation  and  generation,  death  and  birth,  of  its 
forms?  The  past  is  not,  even  so  soon  as  it  is 
named.  The  past  is  not;  it  is  non-existent;  it  is 
nothing;  not  only  irrecoverable,  but  annihilate. 
The  reality  of  the  world-— and  I  proclaim  all 
science  for  my  voucher, — the  reality  of  the  world 
is  just  the  sum  of  its  possibilities  at  any  instant : 
in  the  dead  past  there  are  no  possibilities;  the 
book  is  closed  and  the  fates  are  departed.  There 
is  a  dream  which  sometimes  comes  to  us  which 
is  a  true  image  of  the  world’s  reality.  In  that 
dream  we  are  ascending  a  stair,  leading  on,  on, 
up  into  the  gloom ;  behind  and  below  us,  as  each 
foot  lifts  to  a  new  tread,  the  stair  dissolves  into 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


511 


nothingness,  and  behind  us  is  only  void  and  the  Allegory 
abyss ;  before  us,  there  are  a  few  steps  faintly 
illumined  and  many  vaguely  surmised,  and  no 
landing  that  we  may  guess;  but  we  must  climb, 
onward  with  all  our  strength,  for  the  stair,  which 
is  the  world,  is  dissolving  moment  by  moment 
beneath  our  feet  and  only  in  mounting  is  there 
life.  That  dream,  I  say,  is  an  image  of  reality, 
and  the  little  light  is  the  illumination  of  our 
science,  and  the  stair  surmised  is  the  great  act 
of  faith  which  is  the  impulse  of  life  and  which 
gives  all  the  meaning  it  can  possess  to  the  little 
that  we  know  and  see. 

The  world,  given  us  by  sense  and  science,  is 
an  allegory,  an  image,  a  riddle  to  be  read.  Hu¬ 
man  experience  is  the  act  of  reading,  and  the 
human  body  is  but  an  instrument  of  precision,  a 
lens,  whose  ever-shifting  focus  is  throwing  the 
signs  into  relief.  Plato  knew  this — most  Chris¬ 
tian  of  pagans — and  he  made  it  his  philosophy. 

Origen  knew  it,  and  he  set  it  forth  in  his  great  Origen 
conception  of  nature  and  history  as  the  phan- 

riT  t-f-  -1  1  Logos 

tasm  of  the  Logos,  which,  in  turn,  is  the  eternal 
Son  of  the  eternal  Will  of  God.  It  is  as  though 
the  Divine  Will  were  the  white  light  of  crea¬ 
tion,  and  the  Divine  Son  the  prism  whereby  this 
light  were  broken  into  the  colored  and  banded 
manifestation,  which  is  the  world;  for  us  knowl¬ 
edge  is  of  two  sorts, — to  measure  the  range 
and  intensities  of  the  colored  expanses,  and 
this  is  the  labor  of  science  and  of  history, — 
and  to  recompose  this  outspread  illumination 
into  the  single  pure  ray  of  white  light  which 
is  its  source  and  essence,  and  this  is  the  in- 


512 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Drama  of 
Redemption 


Nature  and 

Human 

Nature 


sight  of  faith  and  the  truth  of  the  revelation. 

That  the  light  of  this  revelation  is  lifted  up, 
like  the  brazen  serpent  in  the  Wilderness,  like 
the  Cross  of  the  Atonement,  to  be  a  sign  of  sal¬ 
vation  to  suffering  and  tormented  souls,  grop¬ 
ing  in  darkness,  seemed  to  Origen  the  great  les¬ 
son  of  Scriptural  history;  but  assuredly  it  is  no 
less  the  teaching  of  all  history,  natural  and  hu¬ 
man.  For  every  historian  and  every  naturalist, 
consciously  or  not,  casts  his  story  sooner  or  later 
into  the  form  of  a  drama  of  redemption — the 
progress  of  a  civilization,  the  evolution  of  a  race, 
the  crystallization  of  a  nebula  into  a  solar  sys¬ 
tem,  the  unfolding  of  a  rose.  Strife  and  disaster 
accompany  these  processes;  they  end  in  dramatic 
defeats :  but  like  a  drama,  they  are  not  played 
for  the  last  act,  their  meaning  is  not  the  last  act, 
nor  any  act;  their  meaning  is  in  another  dimen¬ 
sion  and  in  another  than  their  scenic  realm;  it 
is  in  a  moral  world,  where  good  and  evil  are  the 
protagonists,  and  in  a  spiritual  world  whose  pres¬ 
ence  penetrates  all  nature  as  the  beauty  of  the 
sunset  penetrates  the  vapors  of  the  evening  skies. 

I  speak  in  images,  but  this  world  is  an  image, 
and  there  is  no  other  speech.  The  plain,  nay, 
the  shouting  fact  of  human  experience  is  that 
men  believe  in  and  desire  goodness  and  beauty, 
and  feel  the  dearth  of  it  and  grope  after  it,  and 
hope  for  light,  and  pray  for  redemption.  This  is 
human  nature,  and  it  is  also  the  nature  of  that 
world  from  which  human  nature  is  born  and 
within  which  we  men  have  being.  The  plain 
fact  is  an  act  of  faith  in  things  unseen,  things 
hoped  for;  and  this  act  we  call  life.  It  is  life; 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


513 


and  it  is  also  belief  in  God  and  yearning  for 
salvation;  and  therefore  I  say  that  Christianity, 
which  has  figured  forth  these  truths  more  pro¬ 
foundly  than  any  other  religion,  is  a  true  religion 
and  the  true  religion,  and  a  revelation  of  life  un¬ 
ceasing.  Wherefore  it  is  that  to  me  the  scepti¬ 
cisms  born  of  rationalistic  science  and  rational¬ 
ized  history  sound  thin  and  piping,  remote  and 
of  little  consequence. 

IV 

The  world  is  an  image  with  a  meaning  and 
life  is  a  peril  sustained  by  the  hope  of  an  escape; 
but  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  assume  that  all 
signs  are  equally  significant  or  all  salvations 
equally  secure.  The  Christian  religion  is  no 
mere  formula;  it  is  specific;  and  none  should 
mistake  that  its  central  and  form-giving  fact  is 
the  life  and  person  of  Jesus  Christ.  Whether 
that  life  is  described  in  the  main  faithfully  by 
disciples  who  viewed  it  with  only  a  partial  com¬ 
prehension,  as  the  simplicity  of  the  Gospels 
would  seem  to  indicate,  or  whether,  as  many 
moderns  judge,  it  is  clouded  with  legend,  is  of 
no  material  importance;  for  in  any  case  its  es¬ 
sence,  its  spiritual  form,  its  Idea  (in  a  Platonic 
mode),  stands  out  with  an  emphasis  which  near 
two  millennia  have  only  rendered  the  more  in¬ 
tense.  For  the  life  of  Jesus  is  a  hinge  in  human 
history,  as  no  student  of  Christendom  can  fail  to 
perceive;  and  as  time  passes,  the  simple  and  ele¬ 
mental  reasons  which  make  of  it  the  image  of 
our  Redemption  become  but  the  more  unencum¬ 
bered  and  clear. 


Life  and 
person  of 
Jesus 


514 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Jesus  and 

common 

men 


Political 

and 

spiritual 

democracy 


Of  these  reasons  doubtless  the  most  obvious 
is  the  truly  preternatural  faith  of  Jesus  in  his  fel¬ 
low  men,  particularly  in  undistinguished  men, 
the  commoners.  “No  other  teacher,”  remarks 
Glover,  “dreamed  that  common  men  could 
possess  a  tenth  part  of  the  moral  grandeur  and 
spiritual  power  which  Jesus  elicited  from  them — 
chiefly  by  believing  in  them.  Here,  to  anyone 
who  will  study  the  period,  the  sheer  orig¬ 
inality  of  Jesus  is  bewildering.”  The  Greeks 
had  discovered  the  political  form  of  democ¬ 
racy,  but  it  was  a  form  without  the  motive 
which  could  make  democracy  live;  it  was  de¬ 
signed  for  the  great-souled  man,  though  even 
/xcyaAoj/ruxta,  from  a  practical  point  of  view,  seemed 
to  them  to  approach  the  Quixotic.  And  Quix¬ 
otic  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  addressed  not  only  to 
the  superior  among  men  but  also  to  slaves  and 
women  and  the  weak  of  this  world,  certainly 
appeared  to  the  superb  in  learning  and  the  mag¬ 
nificent  in  state  of  the  pagan  empires  within 
which  it  was  first  proclaimed.  And  yet,  century 
by  century,  it  has  forced  its  point:  first,  refuge 
for  the  weak,  alms  to  the  poor,  freedom  for  the 
slave;  then  chivalry,  and  all  that  fine  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  the  helpless  and  the  hapless 
which,  through  the  spread  of  Christianity, 
brought  a  ray  of  illumination  into  the  barbarism 
of  the  Dark  Ages;  and  finally,  under  the  eaves 
of  our  own  years,  the  recognition  of  the  rights, 
political  and  economic  and  human,  of  all  men 
and  women  and  children,  of  all  humanity,  to  par¬ 
ticipation  in  the  great  hope  of  mankind.  These 
things  were  denied  by  paganism;  these  things 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


515 


have  been  affirmed  by  Christianity  from  the  day 
of  its  founder;  and  it  is  the  vigor  of  this  affirma¬ 
tion  vvrhich  has  put  into  democracy  a  spiritual 
power  and  a  living  force. 

But  it  is  not  merely  for  its  democracy  that  the 
faith  of  Jesus  in  common  men  is  crucially  sig¬ 
nificant;  there  is  in  it  a  subtler  and  more  psy¬ 
chical  import.  For  it  means — and  this  is  close 
to  the  inner  genius  of  all  Christianity — a  rebuke 
to  judgments  which  are  but  of  the  senses  and 
the  reason,  and  an  affirmation  that  man,  too,  is 
clothed  in  an  allegorical  flesh,  and  that  the  pass¬ 
ing  semblance  of  life  is  in  no  wise  its  immortal 
truth.  The  superb  and  magnificent  of  this  world 
— magnificent  in  raiment,  glorious  in  physique, 
proud  in  intellect,  Greek  gods,  Imperatores, — 
these,  if  they  have  not  humility,  if  they  have  not 
charity,  are  the  whited  sepulchres,  death  at  their 
core.  But  in  the  innocence  and  hopefulness  of 
childhood  there  is  proportion  and  beauty;  in  the 
burden-upbearing  poor  there  is  strength;  and  in 
the  will  of  the  martyr,  through  blood  and  fire, 
there  is  nobility  and  the  glory  of  conquest.  Hold 
up  to  mankind  the  mirror  of  truth,  let  them  see 
the  reflection  not  of  their  actor’s  panoply  but  of 
their  character,  and  the  outer  values  writhe  and 
twist  as  in  a  flame :  what  seemed  fair  shows 
wizened  and  shrunken,  and  what  had  shown 
lame  and  crippled  is  perceived  as  a  flowering. 
Men  know  this  true,  and  they  forget  it  hourly; 
and  perhaps  it  is  this  forgetfulness,  this  habitual 
drunkenness  of  the  lethal  senses,  which  has  em¬ 
phasized  in  counterpoise  the  Christian  symbol¬ 
ism  of  the  gruesome,  the  death’s  head  and  all 


Rebuke  to' 
judgments 
of  sense 


516 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Death’s 

aspect 


The  Agony 


that.  ‘^That  skull  had  a  tongue  in  it,  and  could 
sing  once;  how  the  knave  jowls  it  to  the  ground, 
as  if  it  were  Cain’s  jaw-bone,  that  did  the  first 
murder!  That  might  be  the  pate  of  a  politician, 
which  this  ass  now  o’er-offices,  one  that  would 
circumvent  God.  .  .”  One  that  would  circum¬ 
vent  God  !  —  in  all  Greek  tragedy  is  there  a  match 
in  irony  for  this  fearful  Shakespearian  phrase? 
“Get  you  to  my  lady’s  chamber,  and  tell  her,  let 
her  paint  an  inch  thick,  to  this  favor  she  must 
come :  make  her  laugh  at  that.”  There  is  an  in¬ 
exorable  reality  which  the  Christian  religion 
faces,  and  faces  inflexibly,  though  it  is  not  the 
reality  of  the  superficial  flesh. 

Jesus  believed  in  men,  not  in  their  appear¬ 
ances;  just  as  his  faith  in  God  was  in  a  power 
not  external  in  nature.  This  is  in  part  the  im¬ 
port  of  his  love  of  children,  his  patience  with  the 
simple-minded,  his  sympathy  for  the  halt  and 
blind.  But  it  is  more  than  a  humane  sympathy 
as  it  is  more  than  a  democratic  faith.  For  at 
the  bottom  it  is  recognition  of  the  need  of  salva¬ 
tion  and  the  longing  for  a  savior.  Men  are  im¬ 
perfect  and  life  is  a  battle,  well-nigh  a  disaster. 
The  feeble,  the  crippled,  the  dim-minded,  these 
do  but  image  our  universal  human  condition  in 
a  world  wherein  contention  is  bitter  and  inex¬ 
tinguishable,  where  suffering  and  destruction  are 
an  unchanging  lot,  and  where  the  supreme  virtue 
is  heroism.  And  thence  we  come  to  the  final 
symbol  of  the  life  of  Christ,  that  Agony  and 
Crucifixion  which  the  Church  has  with  inevitable 
truth  made  the  sign  of  its  faith :  Christendom  is 
a  Christendom  of  the  Cross,  nor  can  Christen- 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


517 


dom  ever  be  anything  else;  for  without  the  sign, 
the  faith  passes.  To  the  rational  mind  there  is 
a  hopeless  antagonism  between  the  fact  of  the 
Passion  and  the  theory  of  Divinity;  but  the 
Scholastics  were  right,  so  far  as  keeping  the  im¬ 
portant  thing  is  concerned,  in  making  theology 
rigidly  submissive  to  revelation;  it  is  not  the 
intelligo,  but  the  credo  that  expresses  Christian  truth 
to  experience,  and  in  the  credo  the  inevadable  article 
is  the  proclamation  of  salvation  per  viam  cnicis. 

Not  that  the  salvation  is  found  in  the  fact  of 
suffering:  in  itself  that  is  meaningless.  But  it  is 
to  be  found  in  the  vicariousness  of  the  suffering, 
in  the  Atonement,  and  in  the  intention  of  the 
vicarious  gift.  That  Jesus  should  have  died  for 
his  fellow  men  is  in  no  great  way  distinctive; 
there  are  animals  that  die  for  one  another,  and 
instincts  that  call  for  such  vicarious  death.  But 
what  he  died  for — and  here  again  we  come  to 
what  is  most  deeply  and  nobly  our  humanity— is 
the  ideal  in  human  nature,  the  meaning  in  hu¬ 
man  life.  His  death  prolongs  no  man’s  physical 
years,  but  it  has  transfigured  the  significance  of 
the  lives  of  myriads  of  men;  and  it  has  sym¬ 
bolized,  infinitely  more  than  any  other  death,  the 
glory  of  our  human  power  to  surrender  the 
mortality  of  the  flesh  for  the  sake  of  the  im¬ 
mortal  pattern  of  humanity.  As  a  man  Jesus 
lived  and  as  a  martyr  he  died,  not  for  individual 
fellows — father  or  mother  or  brethren  or  sisters, 
— but  for  the  Type  and  Ideal  in  human  nature 
which  he  perceived  in  his  own  soul  and  revealed 
in  the  souls  of  his  followers.  It  is  in  this  sense, 
I  take  it,  that  he  speaks  of  himself  as  the  Son  of 


Per  viam 
cruets 


Vicarious 

sacrifice 


34 


518 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Imago 

Christi 


Pascal  on 
the  hidden 
God 


Man.  At  all  events  it  is  as  the  Son  of  Man,  as 
the  Pattern  of  ennobled  Humanity,  that  his  im¬ 
age  is  engraven  in  the  heart  of  Christendom. 

Aye,  it  is  in  this  sense  that  he  images  all  that 
is  most  worthy  and  beautiful  in  human  living; 
for  men  who  own  a  true  humanity  live  not  for 
hand-service  or  lip-service  to  their  companions, 
but  for  their  ideal  of  what  a  man  should  be  and 
a  life  should  be.  And  that  men  die  for  such  an 
ideal,  die  willingly,  die  by  the  thousand  and  the 
tens  of  thousand,  has  not  the  great  war  shown? 
does  not  history  show  it?  They  march  and  they 
battle  and  they  accept  crucifixion  for  the  Son  of 
Man;  and  this  is  their  salvation;  it  is  in  this  that 
they  find  God.  Here  again  is  a  supreme  human 
truth  which  is  the  supreme  Christian  truth,  and 
which  makes  the  life  of  the  founder  of  the  re¬ 
ligion  its  ultimate  revelation.  Scripture,  writes 
Pascal,  says  “that  God  is  a  hidden  God,  and  that, 
since  the  corruption  of  nature,  he  has  left  men 
in  a  blindness  from  which  they  cannot  issue  save 
through  Jesus  Christ,  without  whom  all  com¬ 
munication  with  God  is  taken  away:  Nemo  novit 
Patrem,  nisi  Filins,  et  cui  voluerit  Filins  revelareF 
And  surely,  there  is  a  revelation  in  the  hearts  of 
all  men  of  that  Son  who  is  their  ideal  of  what 
man  should  and  may  be,  and  in  the  image  of  the 
Son  a  vision  of  the  hidden  God. 


V 

From  time  to  time  in  the  course  of  the  events 
of  the  life  of  man  there  come  periods  which  mark 
the  close  of  the  natural  chapters  of  human  his¬ 
tory.  Usually  such  periods,  such  chapters,  are 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


519 


better  seen  with  their  remoteness;  the  perspec¬ 
tive  of  ages  is  required  to  bring  into  relief  the 
full  rounding  out  of  historic  episodes.  But  on 
occasion  the  chapter  is  closed  with  such  finality, 
the  changes  which  mark  its  period  are  so  vastly 
volcanic,  that  not  even  to  the  contemporary 
mind  is  its  meaning  lost,  and  to  men  in  their  own 
day  is  brought  realization  of  the  fact  that  once 
again  a  mode  of  living,  a  Dispensation,  has  been 
tried  out  by  mankind,  and  that  once  again  the 
eternal  truth  of  human  nature  has  been  told  in 
its  temporal  parable. 

In  such  an  hour  of  finality,  in  such  a  period 
of  history,  our  days  are  cast.  But  yesterday, 
through  all  our  cities,  down  all  our  gauded  high¬ 
ways,  we  rode  in  fatuous  pomp,  confident,  com¬ 
placent,  exalted  in  our  own  material  and 
intellectual  works;  and  but  yesterday  up  from 
Tartarus  there  thrust  a  tongue  of  consuming 
flame,  and  the  pride  of  our  works  became  ashes, 
— nay,  but  today !  for  the  fumes  have  not  yet 
cleared,  and  we  still  grope  blindly  amid  the  burn¬ 
ing  dust  of  our  own  destruction.  Four  hundred 
years  ago,  in  such  another  period  as  is  ours, 
Europe  passed  from  the  Middle  Ages  into  the 
Renaissance.  The  change  began  with  the  re¬ 
ligious  wars  and  the  breaking  down  of  old 

ecclesiastical  conceptions;  and  it  moved  forward, 
through  broken  bars,  to  the  myriad  fantastic 
specializations  of  life  which  make  up  our  civiliza¬ 
tion:  to  the  new  political  conception  of  the 

sovereign  irresponsible  among  sovereigns,  to  the 
new  vagaries  of  the  arts  and  compartmentaliz- 
ings  of  the  sciences,  to  the  new  divisions  and 


Chapters 
of  history 


Our  own 
day 


520 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


The  Church 


To 

Descartes 


multiplications  of  our  economic  and  social  in¬ 
stitutions  and  of  our  ideal  interests, — every¬ 
where  to  politics  for  politics’  sake,  art  for  art’s 
sake,  knowledge  for  the  sake  of  knowledge, 
magnitude  and  wealth  and  power  for  the  sake 
of  magnitude  and  wealth  and  power.  In  the  do¬ 
main  of  religious  form,  during  this  period,  the 
development  has  been  parallel:  the  dissolution 
of  the  international  church,  the  problem  of  the 
separation  of  ecclesiastical  from  political  institu¬ 
tions,  the  multiplication  of  sects  and  of  theo¬ 
logies,  and  finally  the  secularization  of  life  with 
a  sort  of  Sabbatical  conformity  as  its  religious 
lien;  in  short,  an  effort  to  separate  out  from  the 
substance  of  life  the  religious  element,  and  to 
make  of  it  a  thing  apart.  And  as  with  religion, 
so  with  philosophy.  We  speak  of  an  emancipa¬ 
tion  of  mind,  when  what  we  mean  is  rather  a 
withdrawal  from  life.  The  mission  of  philos¬ 
ophy,  as  wisdom  of  the  highest  things,  yea,  as 
the  handmaiden  of  theology,  has  been  disowned, 
even  with  the  quiet  Cartesian  gesture  of  con¬ 
formity,  and  we  have  passed  on  to  quibbles  about 
knowledge,  to  creeds  of  experience  based  upon 
the  shallows  of  experience,  to  critiques  that 
touch  the  pulse  of  no  spiritual  need,  and  to 
antinomies  of  disembodied  reason  which  die 
away  into  the  vanities  of  logistic.  .  .  O  Rene 
Descartes,  clear-eyed  and  clean-souled,  true  in 
devotion  to  truth,  wouldst  thou  have  had  cour¬ 
age  so  to  disown  the  past  hadst  thou  seen  unto 
what  mouthings  and  mummings  and  shadow- 
plays  thou  wert  parting  the  way?  For  philos¬ 
ophy  is  become  as  an  histrion’s  art,  whereto 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


521 


the  curtains  rise  amid  indifference  and  fall  unto 
darkness. 

I  speak  in  no  forgetfulness  of  the  much  that 
is  subtle,  that  is  true,  that  is  noble  in  modern 
philosophy,  and  I  speak  in  no  condemnation,  for 
it  is  ours  to  understand,  not  to  reject  history. 
But  I  speak  also  with  a  consciousness  which  to¬ 
day  many  a  man  shares  with  me  of  the  pitiful¬ 
ness  of  the  intellectual  failure  which  has  closed 
the  era  of  the  Renaissance.  For  the  Great  War, 
like  a  biting  irony,  has  torn  away  the  founda¬ 
tions  of  our  conceits  and  stripped  us  of  our  suf¬ 
ficiencies.  Under  the  test  of  a  naked  human 
passion  the  Renaissance  philosophies  have  been 
but  as  thin  hands  and  shrill  voices  uplifted 
against  a  wind  of  disaster.  The  realisms  that 
knew  no  reality  save  number  and  power,  the 
idealisms  that  glozed  with  soft  speech  our  un¬ 
healed  sores  and  deep  corruptions,  the  foolish 
adorations  of  the  natural  man,  the  sounding  cant 
about  evolution  and  progress,  all  are  become  but 
as  gibbering  and  grimace,  meaningless.  In  an 
hour  when  men  had  their  utmost  need  of  a  full 
intelligence,  an  age  which  had  boasted  itself 
intellectual  above  all  ages  fell  hapless  into  the 
Abyss. 

With  the  Great  War  the  period  of  the  Renais¬ 
sance  is  come  and  another  episode  of  human 
history  is  turning  to  the  past.  Yet  it  does  not 
pass  without  its  lesson,  its  enlightenment,  even 
though  we  shall  be  slow  in  reading  the  symbol. 
For  it  has  shown  us  that  reason  alone  is  not  suf¬ 
ficient  for  the  guidance  of  life;  it  has  shown  us 
that  patriotism  is  not  enough,  that  the  needy 


Irony  of  the 
Great  War 


Patriotism 
not  enough 


522 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Men’s 

capabilities 


The  dead 

proclaim 

life 


soul  calls  also  for  the  solace  of  a  last  viaticum; 
and  it  has  shown  us  once  again  that  the  road  to 
wisdom  is  through  suffering.  It  has  thrown  into 
relief  also,  and  anew,  the  image  of  Faith.  In  the 
course  of  the  war  we  have  seen  men  capable  of 
cruelties  and  wickednesses  which  we  had 
dreamed  to  be  forevermore  impossible;  but  we 
have  also  seen  them  rising  to  nobilities  of  vi¬ 
carious  sacrifice  in  which  we  had  begun  to  dis¬ 
believe  :  in  its  depths  and  in  its  heights  human 
nature  has  opened  unforeseen  ranges,  below  rea¬ 
son  and  above  reason,  and  we  must  set  new 
measures  for  men.  We  must  take  into  account 
the  whole  reach  of  human  possibilities,  arro¬ 
gances  and  humilities,  negations  and  aspirations, 
and  we  must  assess  against  the  world  not  alone 
what  men  have  done,  but  what  they  have  been 
baffled  in  attempting,  finding  in  futile  impulse 
and  in  the  dim  prayers  of  unillumined  souls  per¬ 
haps  our  securest  clue  to  the  understanding  of 
that  Cosmic  Nature  which  has  so  strangely 
created  us  strangers  in  her  midst.  The  pattern 
of  bones  upon  a  fossil  slab  is  but  the  hieroglyph 
of  the  shining  creature  that  breathed  and  cried 
in  the  uncounted  past;  the  dead  themselves  are 
but  the  proclamation  of  life,  whose  riddle  is  read 
not  in  the  material  token  or  the  dissolvent  fact 
but  in  the  very  glamours  of  living  endeavor.  In 
the  end,  it  is  even  in  the  magnitude  of  our 
failures  that  we  read  the  magnitude  of  our  faiths. 

Before  us,  through  the  gray  of  depression  that 
is  settled  upon  the  nations,  lies  the  road  to  the 
discovery  and  recovery  of  the  meaning  of  his¬ 
tory,  the  white  light  of  the  symbol.  We  have 


APOLOGIA  PRO  FIDE 


523 


had  a  new  lesson,  a  new  revelation;  it  is  ours  to 
resolve  it,  not  treading  again  the  ways  of  the 
departed,  but  seeking  in  our  own  fashion  the 
light  in  which,  despite  all  illusions,  our  life  itself 
is  an  act  of  trust.  To  religion  and  philosophy, 
conjoined  in  their  mutual  quest  of  the  highest 
truth,  is  appointed  the  natural  guidance.  In  the 
period  just  past  they  have  moved  in  separation, 
not  wholly,  but  essentially;  and  neither  has 
thereby  gained  in  its  hold  upon  men’s  minds  and 
hearts.  In  the  future,  they  must  recover  their 
community,  if  not  of  form,  at  least  of  under¬ 
standing,  until  once  more  in  portraying  the 
transfigured  Man  they  shall  have  searched  out 
the  Logos  of  the  World. 

I  am  reverting  to  Christian  imagery,  but  how 
else  than  revert  if  in  this  alone  I  find  the  vehicle 
of  my  thought?  For  if  the  world  be  a  symbol 
and  its  meaning  such  truth  as  I  find  implied  in 
human  nature  and  in  human  life,  then  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  everlastingly  true.  And  because  the 
world  is  a  symbol  and  life  an  expression  of  faith 
in  the  fact  of  a  meaning,  I  find  in  the  study  of 
nature  and  of  history  but  the  one  interest  of  the 
discovery  of  a  true  reading,  and  in  the  recorded 
history  of  Europe  and  of  Christendom  but  the 
one  possible  reading.  Whereof  the  token,  like  a 
stamp  ineffacable,  inescapable,  waxes  in  great¬ 
ness  and  intensity  with  each  repetition  of  its 
eternal  truth:  for  its  form  is  forever  the  same, 
cast  as  in  relief  upon  the  chaotic  gloom,  a  stu¬ 
pendous  Crucifixion,  haloed  with  supernal  light 
as  out  of  a  cleft  in  the  heavens,  and  lifted  up 
amid  the  night  of  an  outer  Darkness. 


A  new 
revelation 


Truth 

everlasting 


It  is  for  philosophy  to  point  the  way;  it  is  for  him  who 
hath  the  eyes  to  see  the  vision. 


— Plotinus. 


To  this  nobler  purpose  the  man  of  understanding  will 

devote  the  energies  of  his  life . 

I  understand ;  you  mean  that  he  will  be  a  ruler  in  the  city 
of  which  we  are  the  founders,  and  which  exists  in  idea  only; 
for  I  do  not  believe  that  there  is  such  an  one  anywhere  on 
earth  ? 

In  heaven  there  is  laid  up  a  pattern  of  it,  methinks,  which 
he  who  desires  may  behold,  and  beholding  may  set  his  own 
house  in  order.  But  whether  such  an  one  exists,  or  ever  will 
exist  in  fact  is  no  matter;  for  he  will  live  after  the  manner 
of  that  city,  having  nothing  to  do  with  any  other. 


Plato. 


INDEX 


Abelard,  390 
Abraham,  34 
Adam  of  St.  Victor,  390 
^neid,  17,  18,  424 
^schylus,  149,  291,  428,  458 
Aguinaldo,  183 
Alexander  the  Great,  456 
Amergin,  262 
Anaximander,  483 
Apollodorus,  410,  424 
Aquinas,  St.  Thomas,  121 
Archimedes,  310,  317 
Aristotle,  7,  15,  39,  47,  69,  73, 
74,  97,  103,  115,  142,  143, 
196,  197,  257,  290,  313, 
315,  317,  321,  325,  339, 
341,  342,  364f,  374,  384, 
405,  408f,  411f,  416f,  420, 
422f,  442,  443,  447,  449, 
481 

Aristoxenos,  419. 

Arnim,  A.  von,  181n 
Arnold,  Matthew,  403 
Aucassin  and  Nicolete,  148 
Augustine,  St.,  115,  120,  127, 
302,  443,  456 

Bach,  Joh.  Sebastian,  388,  398, 
399,  400 

Bacon,  Roger,  70 
Beethoven,  398,  400,  404 
Bergson,  H,,  301f,  331w,  348f, 
354,  357,  358 
Berlioz,  Hector,  404 
Bizet,  Alexandre,  404 
Boccaccio,  394 
Boileau,  443 
Bosanquet,  B.,  73 


Botticelli,  389,  394 
Bradford,  Governor,  478 
Bradley,  F.  H.,  305 
Brahms,  404 

Brown,  Sir  Thomas,  98,  105, 
112,  189 

Browning,  Robert,  29,  130, 
242,  243,  403 

Bruno,  Giordano,  70,  78,  209 
Buddha,  106,  444 
Burali-Forti,  C.,  2>Z\n,  Mhi 
Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  402 
Burton,  Richard,  168,  176«, 
393 

Butcher,  S.  H.,  2An,  408,  417, 
475,  490 

Byron,  Lord,  402 
Bywater,  Ingram',  416,  418 

Cabanel,  A,,  402 
Calvin,  John,  120,  128 
Cantor,  G.,  ZAOn 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,  393 
Cezanne,  O.,  402 
Charles  VIII,  442 
Charles  of  Valois,  442 
Chopin,  404 

Cicero,  25,  304,  366,  456 
Claudius,  456 
Cleanthes,  168,  180,  181 
Clerk-Maxwell,  J,,  321 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  402 
Condorcet,  Marquis  de,  9 
Constable,  John,  402 
Copernicus,  103,  311 
Corneille,  398 

Corot,  Jean  Baptiste,  244,  402 
Couturat,  Louis,  321,  345f 


526 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Crashawe,  Richard,  403 
Cratylus,  354,  368 
Croesus,  40 

Daniel,  481 

Dante  Alighieri,  103,  111,  165, 
181,  272,  374,  389,  392, 
401,  443,  462,  506 
Darwin,  Charles,  50 
David,  J.  L.,  401 
Debussy,  Claude,  405 
Dedekind,  Richard,  326,  329, 
338 

Degas,  H.  G.  E.,  402 
Democritus,  3,  188f,  311 
Demosthenes,  456 
Dercyllides,  310,  311 
De  Rerum  Natura,  107,  156, 
157,  174,  175,  190 
Descartes,  210,  274,  302,  500, 
520 

De  Smet,  Father,  158,  161w 
Dies  Irce,  151,  227,  390,  391 
Dionysius,  414 

Divine  Comedy,  111,  149,  181, 
389,  392 

Dobson,  Austin,  403 
Donne,  John,  124f 
Duhem,  Pierre,  372 
Duns  Scotus,  343 
Dvorak,  Anton,  404 
Dynasts,  The,  294f 

Ecclesiastes,  24,  483 
Empedocles,  275 
Epicurus,  3,  157 
Euripides,  193,  267,  363,  420, 
456 

Farges,  M.,  303,  317,  318 
FitzGerald,  Edward,  138,  403 
Frege,  G.,  353w 


Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,  102, 
286 

Gericault,  Jean  Louis,  402 
Gilgamesh  Epic,  24,  25 
Glover,  T.  R.,  514 
Goethe,  399 
Gounod,  404 
Grieg,  404 

Gummere,  Francis,  13 
Hadrian,  273 

Hamlet,  61,  245,  268,  407,  425 
Hardy,  Thomas,  62,  294 
Harrison,  J.  E.,  315 
Haydn,  399 

Hegel,  3,  134,  135,  184,  305 
Hekler,  A.,  455 
Henley,  William,  403 
Heraclitus,  3,  19,  106,  180,  189, 
193,  366,  367,  368,  480 
Herodotus,  19,  40 
Hesiod,  59,  213,  363 
Hippias,  304 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  321,  322 
Homer,  273,  438 
Horace,  139,  443 
Hugo,  Victor,  246 
Hume,  255,  305 

Ibsen,  246 

James,  William,  166,  204,  205, 
307 

Jesus,  10,  22,  151,  283,  444, 
513,  516 

Joh,  25,  150,  176f,  286,  482f 
Jonson,  Ben,  394 
Joshua,  475 

Jowett,  B.,  16»,  25n,  62n,  164w 
Judges,  475 

Kant,  90,  135,  255,  302,  343f, 
362 

Keats,  John,  402 


INDEX 


527 


Keokuk,  63 
King  Lear,  268 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  403 

Laws,  382,  419 
La  Mettrie,  188 
Lang,  A.,  24;t,  61,  149 w 
Laplace,  311 
Leibnitz,  94,  116,  123 
Le  Roy,  E.,  301 
Lessing,  188,  419 
Locke,  42,  321  f,  343,  344 
Longinus,  228,  298,  299,  438 
Lotze,  94 

Louis  XIV,  396,  397,  442,  443 
Lucretius,  107,  156f,  174,  178, 
190,  198,  311 

Macbeth,  167,  182 
Maccabees,  475 
Macdowell,  Edward,  404 
Machiavelli,  165 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  246 
Magellan,  467 
Manet,  E.,  402 
Mani,  150 
Marlowe,  393,  394 
Mersenne,  Marin,  177w,  393 
Michelangelo,  394 
Milhaud,  Gaston,  319,  336,  354 
Mill,  J.  S.,  96,  101 
Millet,  J.  F.,  402 
Milton,  126,  127,  147,  394,  396, 
426f,  442,  451,  489 
Mohammed,  150,  444 
Moliere,  398 
Monet,  Claude,  402 
Montaigne,  79,  101,  189 
Moses,  150,  475 
Morte  d’ Arthur,  14,  20,  22 
Mozart,  399 

Murray,  Gilbert,  40m,  363m 


Napoleon,  253,  401 
Nero,  456 

Niebelungenlied,  14 
Nietzsche,  27,  509 
Newman,  J.  H.,  181 
Newton,  94,  311 

Odyssey,  24,  272 
Occam,  William  of,  343 
Omar  Khayyam,  37,  138f,  141 
Origen,  506,  507,  511 
Othello,  189 

Paccius,  416 
Paderewski,  404 
Padoa,  A,,  331m,  353m 
Palaestrina,  388 
Paracelsus,  70 
Paradise  Lost,  147,  150 
Parkman,  Francis,  185 
Parmenides,  103,  305 
Pascal,  223,  224,  332m,  356, 
506,  507,  518 
Pater,  Walter,  26 
Pauson,  414 

Pericles,  16,  163,  166,  456,  458 
Petrarch,  394 
Phcedo,  369,  375,  381,  424 
Phcedrus,  55,  85,  369,  381,  385 
Pharaoh  Merneptah,  471,  472 
Philebus,  113,  340m,  369 
Pindar,  69,  424 

Plato,  4,  17,  19,  20,  25,  54,  62, 
68,  73,  75,  78,  85,  97,  98, 
109,  113f,  133,  135,  142, 

144,  146,  152,  153,  184, 

208,  212f,  259,  263,  273, 

288,  308,  314,  333,  340m, 
344,  351,  358,  364,  367f, 
373f,  409,  410f,  419,  421f, 

434,  439,  445,  447,  456, 

481,  488,  506,  507,  511 

Plotinus,  184,  209 


528 


NATURE  AND  HUMAN  NATURE 


Plutarch,  77,  109,  193,  214, 
359,  372,  380,  486 
Poincare,  H.,  308f,  312,  316, 
327,  328w,  340w,  342,  346f, 
354f,  357,  358 
Polygnotus,  413 
Pope,  Alexander,  126f,  128, 
398 

Prickard,  A.  O.,  299n 
Proclus,  106,  112,  132 
Prometheus  Bound,  149,  215, 
291f,  482f 
Protagoras,  7,  304 
Psalms,  119,^364,  401,  473 
Purcell,  Henry,  395 
Pythagoras  and  Pythagore¬ 
ans,  28,  41,  53,  305,  310, 
359,  360,  365,  367,  419, 
426,  439 

Rabelais,  19 
Racine,  398 
Raphael,  394 
Religio  Medici,  105w 
Republic,  25,  371,  375,  382, 
412,  421f 
Ronsard,  394 
Rousseau,  J.  J.,  33,  38 
Rousseau,  Th.,  244 
Royce,  Josiah,  132,  183 
Russell,  Bertrand,  326f,  328w, 
331w,  353,  356w 

St.  Bernard,  120 
St.  Catherine,  122 
St.  Paul,  501 
St.  Perpetua,  159 
St.  Teresa,  29 
St.  Thomas,  139 
St.  Veronica,  429 
Santayana,  G.,  187,  305 
Sahagun,  Bernardino  de,  133, 
134,  160,  264 
Saleeby,  C.  W.,  36,  105w 


Samson  Agonistes,  426f 
Sargent,  John  S.,  472,  485 
Savonarola,  443 
Sappho,  401 
Schlegel,  Friedrich,  391 
Schopenhauer,  44,  112,  134, 
186 

Schubert,  404 
Schumann,  404 
Scotus  Erigena,  184 
Seneca,  424 
Shaftesbury,  115 
Shakespeare,  37,  105»,  394f, 
425,  516 

Shelley,  401,  402,  413 
Sheppard,  W.  F.,  324 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  393,  394, 
413 

Socrates,  4,  17,  152,  301,  302, 
366,  367,  368,  384,  423, 
442,  456,  458,  488 
Solomon,  401,  475,  482 
Solon,  40,  198 
Sophocles,  401 
Spencer,  Herbert,  100,  134 
Spenser,  Edmund,  394 
Spinoza,  3,  70,  76,  110,  184, 
325,  330f,  488f 
Strauss,  Richard,  404 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  403 
Swift,  Dean,  398 
Swinburne,  403 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  166 
Symposium,  212 

Tacitus,  13,  165 
Taliesin,  263,  269 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  121 
Tennyson,  Lord,  137f,  403 
Tertullian,  159,  160 
Thales,  59 
Thecetetus,  98,  382 
Themistocles,  40 
Thomas  of  Celano,  390 


INDEX 


529 


Thompson,  Francis,  403 
Thucydides,  16,  40,  164,  175, 
178 

Timceus,  133,  340w,  364,  370, 
375f 

Tschaikowsky,  404 
Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  244,  402 
Tylor,  E.  B.,  58,  203 

Verdi,  404 

Vergil,  17,  18,  34,  401,  424 
Villon,  394 

Wagner,  404 
Wallis,  R.  E.,  lS9n 
Watson,  William,  403 
Webster,  John,  267 


Wells,  H.  G.,  82 
Whistler,  J.  McNiell,  402 
Whitehead,  A.  N.,  3l6n 
Whitman,  Walt,  263 
Wigglesorth,  176 
Woodberry,  G.  E,,  413 
Wordsworth,  263,  402 

Xenophanes,  365,  366 
Xenophon,  302,  360,  366 
Xerxes,  19 

Yeats,  William  Butler,  403 

Zeno,  305 
Zeuxis,  410 


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